Spice Bistro

Hailing from south-​India, I have special affinity towards restaurants and cuisines that serve spicy food. So naturally I like Caribbean cuisines, given it is a fusion of cuisines from several countries, including India, brought over by people who migrated to Caribbean. And in Atlanta, you can find so many Caribbean restaurants in stone mountain area and some of them are quite good as well. But when I saw that there is one on buford highway, closer to home, I was naturally excited to try!
So the first time I dropped in to get some to-​go on a weekday for lunch. I ordered 6 piece chicken wings jerk style and Jollah rice. And I liked the jerk style chicken wings a lot and I would definitely recommend ordering it anytime. And Jollah rice was nothing to write to home about. It was ok and at $ 15, I felt that it was quite expensive. But those wings, I can take it anytime!
The menu has mix of traditional Caribbean fare and also shawarma, burger, hot dogs for people who may not appreciate hot spicy Caribbean food. When I go to a restaurant, I try to order their specialty food, but to each his own. They also have breakfast menu.
So recently group of friends went to this place for lunch and ordered several items. Out of those I have tried the following.
1) Yam porridge
2) Jerk chicken
3) Chicken wings Jerk style
4) Braised oxtails
5) Curry delight
Yam porridge — This seem to be influenced by the very similar Nigerian dish, Asaro. I ordered this with Shrimp. Initially I didn’t know what to except for this dish but I saw the actually dish I was excited and disappointed at the same time. Excited because it looked spicy and disappointed because for $ 15, there wasn’t much in the plate. But that doesn’t matter, as long as it tasted good. Unfortunately, while the sauce itself was good, the Yam was hard to bite into and felt bit uncooked. So I didn’t really like this dish.
Jerk chicken — I like their jerk chicken, especially their sauce. And I also had ordered chicken wings jerk style, it was quite spicy and just a hint of sweetness from the tomato. GET IT!
Braised oxtails — for those who can’t too much spiciness, this might be the perfect balanced dish here. Oh it was still spicy but it was more sweeter than the Jerk chicken. Many of my friends liked this dish better. Personally, I have eaten better oxtails at other restaurants but this is no slouch either. GET IT!
Curry delight — I only had a bite of this from my friend’s plate and so glad I didn’t order it. It was kind of the most underwhelming dish for me, even though some friends of mine liked this to jerk chicken. It was just too bland for me. MEH!
They also seem to have live music on weekends and I saw some Hookah device too. Check it out.
Overall, it was a well rounded three star food. I would even go back here just for the chicken wings, but they have serious service and time management issues. Despite having called and made reservation, they seemed to be very unprepared. Orders were taken one table at time, at almost fifteen minute interval between each table (we occupied three). And many of us had to wait for more than 2 hours to get our food and in fact some in the party cancelled their order and walked out after having waited for more than two hours.
Don’t mistake me, I am all for waiting for good food. And I know some food takes longer to make, especially when it’s prepared from scratch. And the waiters weren’t rude or anything, but there was so much lacking in communication. At the end of the day, it was a poor service.
So keep that in mind that it might take some time for food to come out here. And they might handle smaller group better.
3 star food but 2 star restaurant.

Spice Bistro is a Caribbean restaurant (at least, I think it’s supposed to be Caribbean) that opened on Buford Highway in Brookhaven in February 2015. It’s in the same shopping center as Little Szechuan and Chigui’s Mexican Bistro & Bar. The food I had here was decent, but I think the prices are high for what you get and the restaurant has service issues.
The menu is a bit odd. There’s traditional Caribbean fare like oxtail, jerk chicken, and plantains, then there’s African dishes like Jollof rice and African salad; breakfast foods like bagels, croissants, muffins, and oatmeal; and random stuff like burgers, hot dogs, roti, quesadillas, shawarmas, Scotch eggs, jambalaya, and fish & chips. What kind of cuisine are they going for?
Our table stuck with Caribbean fare, hoping to try the restaurant’s best dishes. We ordered:
* Island Glazed Beef Ribs ($ 15) — beef ribs glazed with special spices, herb-​marinated, slow-​grilled, served with fries and plantains
* Jerk Chicken ($ 13) — dark meat chicken sauteed and roasted, served with fries and Jollof rice
* Braised Oxtails Rice & Peas ($ 16) — tender, slow-​cooked oxtails, mild seasoning, butter beans, served with rice & peas and plantains
* Curry Delight ($ 13) — sauteed chicken chunks, curry, garlic, cumin potatoes, served with cabbage and plantains
Each of the above entrees came with the choice of two sides (e.g. fries, plantains, cabbage). Water is served in bottles at $ 2 per bottle.
I really wanted to try their Ackee and Saltfish, a traditional Jamaican dish made with ackee fruit, but on a Saturday lunch, they didn’t have the ingredients. I did notice the staff gets their ingredients from Buford Highway: from the newly opened City Farmers Market and Buford Highway Farmers Market. (As a quick aside, I’ve seen staff from different restaurants in Atlantic Station go to Publix and return with ingredients. Just an observation.)
The Braised Oxtails were by far the best of the four dishes I tried. Spice Bistro’s oxtail is different from oxtail I’ve had at other Caribbean restaurants for a couple reasons: (1) The pieces of oxtail were nice and big, some of the bigger Caribbean-​style oxtail I’ve eaten. (2) Instead of being cooked, prepared, and/​or served in a stew, this oxtail comparatively had less sauce/​marinade and wasn’t as fall-​off-​the-​bone tender. Instead, it was thicker, meatier, and chewier (which wasn’t a bad thing). The sauce was savory and tasted good.
The Jerk Chicken was covered in a similar-​looking sauce as the oxtail, but tasted completely different. It was spicy and citrusy. We’d asked for dark meat chicken, but were served some white meat chicken instead. The jerk chicken came bone-​in and there wasn’t a whole lot of meat. What little meat there was was alright. I think Unilocal’s two-​star «Meh. I’ve experienced better.» sums this dish up best.
Like the jerk chicken, the pieces of chicken in the Curry Delight came bone-​in. I thought the curry chicken was better than the jerk chicken. Then again, we actually got the more tender dark meat with the curry chicken, so that was one difference. Not bad.
Despite being one of the very first orders into the kitchen, the Island Glazed Beef Ribs took over *one hour* to come out. When the ribs finally hit the table, they looked impressive. The plate had two huge meaty ribs slathered in what I believe was the same yummy sauce used on the oxtail. The rib meat was tasty, but was way too tough and chewy. These ribs certainly aren’t the tender ribs most people are accustomed to.
The sides were OK. While there wasn’t a whole lot of flavor, I enjoyed the rice & peas. They give you big portions. The Jollof rice wasn’t bad either. Jollof rice has a red-​orange color to it because it’s partly prepared with tomatoes along with a variety of spices. The plantains, fries, and cabbage were par for the course. We finished all three of these if that tells you anything. The cabbage was seasoned and had nice flavor.
I called and made a reservation for our group. The first time I called, the lady I spoke with said we didn’t need to make a reservation and we could just show up. Not feeling comfortable with that suggestion, I called back later and spoke with another person who wrote down my information and essentially took our reservation.
It took a very long time for our orders to be taken and for our orders to come out. There were 13 of us and virtually no one else at the restaurant. 9 of 13 of us got our orders within 2 hours. The other 4 in our group cancelled their orders after waiting 2 hours. Yes, 2 hours. The staff did not acknowledge the excruciatingly slow service nor give us any indication of expected wait times. While the staff seemed nice, the service was exceptionally poor.
Credit cards are accepted and payments are handled via iPad/​Square.
Spice Bistro is a small restaurant with lots of TVs and it looks like it might become a lounge at night with a bar, karaōke, and hookah. Interior seating capacity is about 40.

Service is slow. 2 hours-​we don’t even have an appetite anymore-​slow.
I went with a group of 14 – 15 people, split evenly among 3 tables. Other than the one person at the bar, already eating (?), we were the only ones there.
One waiter came out and took our orders… one table at a time. Literally, takes one table’s order, goes back to the kitchen for at least 15 minutes, and goes to the next table, etc.
Bottled water is mandatory and he didn’t even bring out enough until I asked for mine 30+ minutes later. Utensils were brought out sporadically.
Food for each table came out every HOUR. Our last table didn’t even get their order and left 2 hours after waiting.
I got the roti grande. It was uneventful. I like the curried potatoes (of course). There was miscommunication but protein doesn’t come with it. I felt badly that their service is so slow that I just paid extra and tipped them.
Oxtail was really good. I would get that again but only if I was the only one in there and maybe only if I called ahead of time!

No no no no no.
This place is probably a drug front. We went there around 6 on a Thursday. There was not anyone else in the restaurant, but thats okay. The person I was with ordered the Fried Rice with chicken and I ordered the House Salad. The menu says the House salad has baby spring mix, black bean corn salsa, roasted red peppers and onions, tortilla strips, white cheddar, spicy jalapeño, and grilled chicken. 30 minutes later the salad came out with iceberg, cabbage, pickles, tomatoes and chicken. They were out of the jalapeño dressing so they brought out salsa for my House Salad. I was so confused but it took so long I was ready to eat. The only problem was after 10 more minutes the fried rice wasn’t ready. We politely asked for the check and left although they promised the other entrée would be done in 2 – 3 minutes. I recommend that no one ever go here.

Disgusting… Inedible…besides getting my order wrong after asking 3 times, the food was the most flavorless disgusting thing i ever tasted. i am not one to complain but this is the truth.

Cuisine is African/​Caribean /​Creole and Southern style Cooking inspired.
I believe it opened just a few months ago. Food is pretty good and like most new restaurants they’re still trying to figure out what there customers like.
This review is based on my visit about 2 months. I’ve been wanting to review this place but the listing was not on Unilocal and I was too lazy to set it up. But finally I decided to add them as a new business.
First let me start with the good.
Being the restaurant is brand new it was very clean. Comfortable tables and chairs. The server was very friendly and was happy to explain the menu to us.
The food was delicious. We ordered the spicy world wings in the jerk seasoning. Perfectly spiced, asked them make sure it wasn’t too spicy.
As entrees I ordered the beef ribs that comes with 2 sides. The beef rib was very flavorful, however it’s just one big rib on a the bone. I would of like it more tender but still enough flavor to gobble it all it up. The sides I requested were rice and peas which are not really on the side menu but I noticed they serve it with the Oxtail so I requested it and they were happy to. I like the rice, they gave me some sauce on the side to pour over my rice which was very nice.
The other side was cabbage, it’s basically just steamed cabbage — no real flavor to it, i just ordered it to balance out the other fatty foods I ordered.
My husband ordered the Braised oxtail and he really liked his food.
We were really happy to discover this place. Before Atlanta we lived in Orange NJ for many years. The majority of the popular is black West indian/​Haitian/​African American. So we had many Caribbean restaurants all over, never had to go too far to get a Jamaican patty or Oxtail or Jerk Chicken, etc. When we moved to Atlanta we didn’t see as many of these type of restaurants a we’re used to. But Atlanta has so many different foods we were happy to try other types of restaurants. But the food at Spice Bisto just felt like home again.
Now for some things I think not everyone would appreciate.
When we came it was a Friday around 6 pm. They have TV’s all around, and they have reggae music blasting playing videos on the TV’s. If you already know all about reggae music, it’s all about the twerking and grinding. So all around you’ll see sexy women in tight shorts, or thongs or tight pants twerking away. It didn’t bother me or my husband, but I probably wouldn’t take my parents or more conservative friends to place like this. It was 6 pm, I would think it would be more appropriate to start blasting music and playing videos after 9 pm. But anyway this is a new restaurant so I think they are still trying to figure out their customer needs.
Not everything on the menu is available and they also have things available that is not on the menu. Again I see things like this common in new restaurants.
Like I mentioned before this was my visit 2 months ago, I don’t know if they still blast the music.
We did order food to go recently, about 2 weeks ago. I had my husband pick up the food so I don’t know about the music. But I can tell you what else we ordered. I had the Jerk chicken with dark meat. Sides were rice and beans and plantains. The chicken was pretty good, they give you plenty of rice and about 3 pieces of plantains. My husband ordered the wings again.
Although the food is good I do feel the price is on the high side considering the location. However, perhaps they can get away with it because there are no other restaurants like it nearby.
They also sell breakfast here, I’d like to try the Ackee and Saltfish next time.