Spicy India — Restaurant in Abilene

from the Civic Center in Abilene but has since moved to the south access road off I-20, just west of Westlake Rd.

I'll start off with the atmosphere. Upon entering we were greeted by a large open space leading up to the counter. Off to the left, the room opened up to several 2 and 4 person tables with larger 6+ tables in the back for larger parties. There was Bollywood music playing from a TV and sound system that was pleasant and not too loud and the temperature was pleasantly cool. The place was immaculately clean and the tables were beautifully decorated with ornate designs and plates.

Now for the service. An old and soft-spoken man in unremarkable attire greeted us with a nod, confirmed we were dining in and motioned with his hand to the room. We took this to mean that we were to sit anywhere we'd like. After taking our seats the old man, who would also be our server, promptly came and took our drink orders. When he returned he took our food orders and answered a couple questions we had about the menu. After about 5 minutes he returned with mine and my brother's meals.

The Food: We both found the food fantastically delicious! My brother ordered the Paneer Butter Masala which is a creamy, savory and sweet dish that had a subtle spiciness and large squares of paneer (fried cottage cheese) and a yellowish-orange color. I order the Spicy Indian Chicken Curry, which is a very spicy, savory, creamy, and salty chicken curry that has a deep orange color. Both meals came with a side of basmati rice, garnished with crispy fried onions. We ordered sides of garlic naan and butter naan, respectively. In regards to my meal, it is essentially a very hot and spicy version of Chicken Tikka Masala. On a scale of 1-4, 1 being no heat and 4 being melt your face off hot (i.e.: Thai hot), this dish ranked somewhere around the 2-3 area. I would classify it as very hot. Not only was the spiciness hot but the meals themselves were also quite hot, temperature-wise. The curries came in beautiful, polished double-walled aluminum bowls that maintained the heat of the food throughout the entirety of the meal. It was still giving off steam as I transferred it to the to-go container as we were leaving. For the prices, you get a serious amount for food. They did not skimp on portion sizes. For comparison you get double the amount of food you would get in a typical meal at someplace like Tikka Shack. Neither my brother or I could finish our meals and ended up taking sizeable amounts home.

Price: this is moderately expensive. Each plate ranged somewhere between $10.99 to $12.99. Appetizers were all in the $8-$9 range. However; as I mentioned before, the portion sizes justify the price. Both my brother I ate for around $36 after tax and not counting the tip.

Menu: they had a rather large menu with at least 20 different entree items and the appetizer menu had well over 10 options. There were 5 pages to the menu(front and back) but most only the first 2 really had food items. The other 3 pages were alcoholic beverages and cocktails, which were not on my menu this time around, though the Indian Mojito did catch my eye.

Hours: Spicy India is open every day but Tuesday. Their hours are somewhat unsual. I assume this is due to some form of religious or cultural reason. They are open Wednesday-Monday: 10a-3p and 5p-10p

Overall: I'm certain there are better places out there and I know for a fact there are worse, but for Indian food in Texas this is the best I've had thus far. It's so strange that such a hidden gem is tucked away in Abilene, TX in a rather obscure and unnoticeable location. Despite it being on I-20, it is tucked just up stream from an off-ramp and as such makes it tricky to access from I-20 itself.

If you've lived here a long time, are new to town, or just passing through, I highly recommend you stop and enjoy the food at Spicy India. It's not too hard to get to and, more importantly, it's worth it!

-The Amazon Wildman, Blogger...

I really cannot give it even one star because I tried to eat there at 2 PM today, but did not. But you have to have at least one star to post a review. One person was there waiting at a table to eat and the rest of the restaurant was empty when we walked in at 2 PM. They close at 3 PM and then they reopen at 5 PM for dinner. We were a party of three. It was 18° outside. They had four top tables by windows and the doors. It was very very cold by the door and the tables along the window. The bench seats that were in the middle of the restaurant that could sit parties up to four were too far away from the table for my mother, who cannot bend forward due to crushed hip reconstruction surgery, to lean forward and eat. And the seats were too hard for her to sit in comfortably. We asked if we could sit at a table away from the door and windows because it was so cold. They had two sets of tables for four people each pushed together in the area of the restaurant away from the window and doors. We asked if we could sit at one of those four tops pushed together away from the cold. There was an employee cleaning a table and they said no we could not sit there. It was reserved for a party tonight at 5 PM. We asked if it could be reset if we ate now and we’re gone by 3 PM when they closed for lunch and they would have two hours before the reservation to bus and reset the table. They said no. We asked the owner and they said no. There exact words were ‘lm sorry ma’am” as they shook their head no. I said I could’ve reset it after we ate as we left.

Although there were at least four workers that were standing behind the counter, looking at us when they said no, I’m not sure if the reasoning was a labor shortage? I understand when you’re busy wanting to sit tables based on their party size etc. I’ve worked in a restaurant and I have many years experience working with restaurants . But the restaurant was wide open. And it was three hours until the party was to get there. But they had the choice to not accommodate us when we asked and we had the choice to leave. So we did. By the way, when we walked in, they asked if it was dining in or carry out and my brother said it was dining in. The employee behind the counter said, “ sit wherever you want” while pointing to all of the tables. The point is wherever we sat they still would have to bus the spots we sat at...

A little background on how I got to this restaurant. We were on a road trip from El Paso to Dallas and was time for lunch and we looked up Google and found a 4.5 star Indian restaurant so we thought we would give it a try.

We ordered vegetable fried rice, samosa chat, chilly chicken, and curd rice. But before I review the food I would like to mention the dressing of the service. The service person did not seem to have formal or presentable attire. The guy had long uncut nails and the lady was completely in casual sleepwear. That was not what we expected from such a highly rated restaurant.

Now about the food, The vegetable fried rice was actually a vegetable pullav. The fried rice did not have fresh and small sliced vegetables. All the vegetables in it were huge chunks as you can see in the pictures and it was just a mixed vegetable rice. The chili chicken was very hot and we couldn't even finish it. The saving Grace was the curd rice but it was served without even a pickle and I had to ask the service for the pickle and she was not sure if the pickle was served with the curd rice. She had to head back into the kitchen and get it after 5 minutes. As you can see in the pictures, we did not finish even half of the food that was served. However, we finished the curd rice which could have had a little bit more curd in it.

During payment, the service lady asked about the food and I gave her honest feedback that the vegetable fried rice was not. In fact, a vegetable fried rice and that the vegetables had to be sliced in the smaller pieces and it had to be fresher and her reply was that this is how it is made here. The chef was also around and she mentioned my feedback to the chef and he smiled at it and walked away. He did not care to talk or discuss the feedback with us.

One thing I can be sure of is that the quantity of food is excellent and a single order of rice can easily feed two people or more. I wish the quality was as good as the quantity of food. If I was rating the food on quantity this restaurant would definitely get a five star. But since I am rating this restaurant based on the quality I would only...