Spice Islands Indonesian is a very unique restaurant, in many ways. From their strange out of the place location at Dunbar & 41st, to being one of the few Indonesian restaurants in town, they are highly overlooked and unnoticed. Well, that’s what I thought from how busy it was when we were there. We arrived at 630pm and left at around 930pm, and the whole time we were there only three other tables were occupied.
First impression, the place is small! Once you open up the menu and take in the surroundings such as the table setting and etc, you realize this is a little bit more fancy than originally thought.
Our server, Rod, was very friendly and basically talked us through the menu. First off, he asked for our preferred spice level, which I thought was very thoughtful. Not everyone can eat spicy, and even the “mild” for Indonesians would probably be a “hot spicy” for Canadians. Together, we agreed on slightly spicy, but he said that he would make one super spicy just to surprise us. I was hoping it wouldn’t be dessert.
Descriptions are cp’d directly from their menu online.
Gado Gado – Indonesian salad
The most popular and most varied salad in Indonesia, consisting of tossed mixed vegetables and a spiced peanut sauce
Small $8 Large $10
Mmm light and peanuty to start the night.
Satay
Meat skewers marinated using a special house recipe and grilled over an open flame
Beef, chicken, or pork (min. six) $1.60/skewer
Very juicy and not overcooked, much appreciated. The peanut sauce was slightly chunky, I like that.
Sayur Lodeh – Coconut sauce vegetables $14
Flavours unite in this well-known creation of assorted vegetables in a succulent coconut sauce
Eggplant!! What else was in here..Asparagus, Carrots, Potatoes, Peppers, Bamboo Shoots?
One of the three specials available for the night, this is the Curry Lobster Tail. I don’t remember the full description for it, but ..it wasn’t that impressive. The lobster meat didn’t fall easily off the shell, so maybe it was overcooked?
Kari Ayam Java – Javanese curry chicken $15
A delicate curry chicken dish originating from the island of Java
Carmine chose this because it had “java” in the description.
By now, you’ve probably noticed something VERY different about my pictures. They’re not my usual no-flash pictures, as I honestly don’t like using it, but it was quite dim in there so I had no choice. Quite unfortunate, because I think it doesn’t help to represent how good some of these dishes actually looked like. The picture below is an example of that.
Rendang Daging – Sumatran spiced beef $16
The most well-known Indonesian beef dish, slowly cooked with over 13 different exotic spice
See, this was my favorite (coincidentally, it was also the spiciest) but it definitely doesn’t do the food justice with flash. Sigh. Take my word for it?
Another of the special of the night, 10.5 Oz Beef Tenderloin with Reduced Coriander-??? sauce. Cooked medium rare, Ellie had to get first dibs so she wouldn’t get one with pink in it.
We had finished all the food above, but us 3 guys were still hungry and ordered another entree.
Opor Ayam – Coconut chicken $15
Nutmeg and coconut cream flavoured chicken
Mm, very creamy, I wished they had upped the spice level for this one though.
While we finished off the curry, the 3 girls had time to digest a bit and were waiting to order some dessert. There is ALWAYS room for dessert! One wanted ice cream and the other wanted fried bananas. How convenient that they come together…
Pisang Goreng – Banana fritters $8 (X2)
Deep-fried banana fritters served with ice cream
Oh these were great. The batter surrounding the banana was very light and lended a nice crisp texture.
Overall, for the 6 of us and all the food we ate, it was reasonable at just $35/head. However, I think the specials were a little overpriced, $30 for Lobster Tails & $42 for a 10.5 Oz Beef Tenderloin?! If we didn’t have those two, we would shaved off $75 from the total. Overall though, I was impressed with both the service & the food. For something a little different from the norm for your special occasions, I would suggest Spice Islands!
Hours as posted on their door. We spent probably half an hour after dessert just sitting and talking, but never did I feel like they wanted to rush us out so they could close early. I actually kind of felt bad that they didn’t have any more customers come in, because I think they definitely deserve the business!
