Spice Lab Tokyo
⭐⭐
Indian Fusion / đ Ginza
đ Visits: 1 (2020)
Spice Lab Tokyo opened in November 2019. The restaurant is attempting to fuse Indian and Japanese cuisine. There are lots of course menus to choose from. On my visit I had the 'Spice Blend' lunch at JPY 4,400 plus tax. This was 6 courses billed as consisting of 'seafood, poultry and meat', a copy of which is below.
The first course was a single-bite amuse bouche, not to my taste and very underwhelming. Next was the 'poultry' dish. This was in fact a coffee cup of chicken-flavoured soup. I presume the 'meat' was the next dish - this was three tiny starters (including a lamb samosa), none special. The fish course followed. I love fish curry and was expecting a beautifully marinated piece of fish and a flavour explosion but unfortunately all the spicing was just in a glaze and a separate sauce. The final savoury dish was pulao rice, paratha and 3 sides. I always appreciate eating non-Japanese rice in Japan and the sides were quite good but there wasn't much in the way of the advertised mushroom. I guess this was their answer to the traditional shokuji at the end of a Japanese meal but I'm used to eating my rice and bread with a proper curry, not just a ramekin of curry sauce. I was offered refills of sides and paratha so all the carbs you could possibly want are here but it was all too boring for me to want to eat any more. Tea was nice but it didn't make up for the disappointment with the rest of the meal. There are pictures of the food in a Tabelog review from a couple of months after my visit.
Service was polite and efficient. Staff can speak fluent English and there are English menus, all of which you can preview on their website.
This is an ambitious restaurant in an expensive location. I knew I wouldn't be getting the 'best' the restaurant had to offer by going for a cheap (but not the cheapest) lunch menu and I didn't expect large portions but I couldn't help leave dissatisfied and Spice Lab did itself no favours with a menu that over-promised. This is possibly the first Indian restaurant in Tokyo attempting to serve very refined food. In the last 20 years a number of restaurants have opened (and some unfortunately have closed) in London serving refined Indian food light years away from a typical curry. I've eaten in most of them and it was difficult to go to Spice Lab without viewing it through that prism. Of course it's not exactly practical to hop over to London for lunch and if you did you'd pay a lot more to eat there than I did at Spice Lab. You might have a better experience if you choose one of the expensive dinner menus but I was still able to judge Spice Lab on flavours and spicing and it fell well short.
The best Indian I've had in Tokyo is Priya in Hiroo.
đ https://tabelog.com/tokyo/A1301/A130101/13240579/
❓ My Rating: ⭐⭐ 2.9
đą Booking: đŠ Easy. Book a day in advance by Tabelog or TableCheck, same day or in advance via phone or just walk in.
đ Location: 10F GICROS GINZA GEMS, 6-4-3 Ginza. 2 mins South-West from the C2 or C3 (Tokyu Plaza Ginza) Exit, Ginza station. 10F multi-tenant building.
Map data ©2021 Google
đ
Visit November 2020
đ´ Damage: 4,400 + 1 drink @ 1,200 + 10%
⏱️ Time taken: 1h
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