Sylhet Spice Cuisine

What a wonderful place to dine, i have been going here now for well over 12 months on quite a regular basis. The food is fantastic and the service is second to none. I would recommend Sylhet Spice to anyone and be extremely confident of a great experience. I cannot praise this restaurant enough.
Comment on this reader review

Daniel Barton
Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Had no booking, just went in with my teenage daughter, desperatley hungry as we had had a long drive. Waiters were attentive and smiled and were friendly. Place was clean and we weren't all crammed together, but sat privately. Food came quite quickly and was definitely one of the best i have ever tasted, and I've eaten a few in my time! The portions were good -sized. Very reasonably priced. Highly recommended!
Comment on this reader review

E Aldridge
Saturday, October 06, 2007

Just as we were beginning to wonder whether the Sylhet Spice in Kings Heath is so committed to providing authentic Bangladeshi cuisine that the chef had popped over to the subcontinent for some extra supplies, our food arrived.

Those in the know apparently come here about an hour before they expect to be hungry, as the restaurant was full yet, poppadums excluded, there was barely a morsel of food to be seen.

A man who I assume was the owner asked us with a concerned look on his face whether we had ordered any poppadums. My advice is to do so if you are already hungry as this will be the only food you see for a while.

We didn’t know this and so were ravenous when our food arrived. But the 50 minutes it took for our meals to reach the table had evidently been well used to create a fragrant and tasty selection of titbits.

As the three of us had spent most of December eating as though we were about to enter hibernation, we went straight to main courses. I wanted some variety, so I ordered the meat Thali – a selection of four or five small dishes with some rice and naan. I got a nicely cooked kebab meat pot, another fragrant dish of robustly spiced lamb, some yoghurt and the ubiquitous chicken tikka massala.

All of it was tasty, although the most impressive part of the selection was the pilau rice, which was perfectly cooked and moreishly spiced and seasoned. This is not meant to damn with faint praise: good rice is as important to a restaurant offering Asian cuisine as good chips are to a chippie. And it’s surprising how often you get badly cooked staple foods like these.

But perhaps it should come as no shock the Sylhet Spice knows its rice from its elbow. Sylhet is a city in the east of Bangladesh known as a rice-growing centre.

My dining partners gave the thumbs-up to their choices, which were the vegetarian Thali and, on account of the January weight loss regime, a selection of Tandoori-cooked with salad. There is an extensive menu for those planning on ingesting a few more calories, although I recommend the Thali as a good method to try lots of dishes without feeling like you’ve gorged yourself.

The restaurant is in a pleasant enough room with tables and some cosy booths in the fashion of an American diner, which seemed somewhat out of place. It has a well-stocked bar and smoking is allowed at the tables. The service is attentive enough, although I’m still waiting for my second pint of lager. The bill for three of us with one beer and two sparkling waters came to a reasonable but not cheap £36. Would I return? Yes, but not if I was in a rush, which is probably as it should be.
Comment on this reader review

Ben Jeffrey
Sunday, January 08, 2006