7 Spice Belfast — Restaurant in Belfast

The wife & me found ourselves in Belfast for our wedding anniversary. We love Indian food & wanted to go into the city to explore. We came across 7 Spice.

We didn’t pre book & it was the busy part of the day around 18:00 pm. The waiter took us to a table, we noticed not a lot of people were eating but drinking.

The waitress took our orders.

Firstly we attempted to order popadoms, they don’t do popadoms. Never been to an Indian restaurant that doesn’t do popadoms.

Secondly the staters took 50 minutes to arrive with no explanation from the staff. We were almost ready to leave.

Starters:

The wife had onion bargie, which for some reason had been deconstructed & shredded. It was absolutely fine she said, nothing out of the ordinary. It came with a salad that had raw red onions in it. She said she thought this was strange to have raw red onions in the salad when having onion bargie🤷‍♀️

I had, the “Mini Mix” this was a piece of chicken in a flavoured curry tandoori sauce, a lamb chop, & kofa kebab. This was really tasty stuff all elements of the dish were spot on. All three meats were succulent & full of flavour. This came with two dipping sauces, one hot & one mild both were great compliments 👍

The only issue I had with my starter was the plate it came on. It was two small & fiddly. It had a rigged design on the plate, cutting up the meat was abit of a pain.

The Mains:

The wife had, Paneer Corma she said it was lovely & sweet with a hint of a garlic taste. She said she really enjoyed this dish👍

I had, Chicken Vinderloo & it was delicious both super fiery & lots of dark rich flavour. The chicken was juicy & tender. Someone in this kitchen knows what they’re doing 👍

Both the main course curry’s were big portions. I said to the wife I’m not sure if Iv ever had a bigger potion of Vinderloo in one sitting before👍

The waiting staff were very un attentive very little communication throughout. If you going to make people wait 50 minutes at least come over to the table & explain. Asked for a jug of water was given single glass.

Overall the food was very good, the plates & bowls for the curry’s I believe need a re think. I get the impression it’s supposed to be a modern take on a traditional restaurant. Even so, no popadoms & shredded onion bargie I don’t believe is the future. Still the mains were excellent, there is real potential with this place given a few tweaks.

We also had

Plan naan bred 👍 Potion of plan chips Basmati rice

Price £49

We thought this price was okay given it was...

Myself and my partner arived at 7 spice slightly before our booking time. Before we had even stepped into the resteraunt, we were asked if we were interested in going inside.

We explained we had a reservation, we were told this was fine, however the staff member just walked away from us without offering a seat. We headed inside and had another staff member ask us how we were, we responded saying we had a booking, only for this staff member to also walk away from us without saying anything. It was only when we approached the hostess stand and said we had a reservation did we get ushered to a table.

We sat down and had menus handed to us. Around a minute later we were asked what drinks we wanted. At this point we had only just taken off our coats, also, since there was only one drinks menu, I had looked at around 2 pages of what was available. We asked for more time.

We ordered our drinks and a bottle of tap water for the table. We then received a single glass of tap water.

The food however was delicious, no faults there. During the meal, we had lots of staff hovering around us as we were seated near the door. Often 2-3 at a time. It was clear the manager was micromanaging his staff infront of guests. We felt watched as well as hurried for our meal, to give an example, the second I emptied my beer bottle into my glass, I had someone take the bottle away as if they had seen me do so, I was mid conversation.

The resteraunt looks nice, the food is great but we just felt rushed, watched and harassed the whole time. Won't be going again.

Also, the single toilet in the...

We were seated in one of the pods which was a lovely experience, something different - very cool, we got lucky as we had not booked in advance.

Having travelled to Bangladesh many years ago my friend and I were keen to take a trip down memory lane with a chicken biryani, however we could not see it on the menu, just lamb biryani. I asked if it was something they did and the owner said not usually but he could do it for us. We had biryani, naan, onion bhaji, malai chicken and mojitos to drink. Everything was exceptional, the chicken was so tender, the onion Bhaji crispy and tasty and best of all the smell of biryani sent us back in time. We always avoid ordering biryani as anytime we have elsewhere it disappoints as the British take it nowhere near as good, but this was seriously good and reminiscent of our experience years ago.

We enjoyed chatting with all the the waiters and waitresses. They took such pride in their work. The service and chat was great. We were joking with Hazam (apologies if I remembered your name incorrectly) about how the dessert menu was not very Bangladeshi with European options and mentioned we were hoping to see mishti on the menu. To our surprise he had recently returned from London this week and had purchased some mishti for himself. He brought some to our table on the house. Totally over and above anything we expected. Unreal, what an experience and so so kind of him to do.

I will definitely be back and will be recommending 7spice to everyone. Thank you so much for a...