Spice (Chelsea Location)

263 Eighth Avenue

(corner of 22nd Street)

Tasty and affordable lunch special!

Spice has various locations, but I am writing specifically about the one indicated at the above address.

For an appetizer and an entrée, the pricing varies from $8 to $10 depending upon selection. As opposed to many lunch specials, the options are quite varied.

For our appetizers, we ordered the pot stickers—dumplings wrapped in house skin with chicken, scallion with sour ponzu sauce. Salty goodness!

And the signature shrimp fritters—ground shrimp and chicken with honey chili sauce.

 

Warning! High-heat alert. Needs to cool down before you make the mistake of popping it in your mouth.

 

For our entrees, we chose the Hawaiian ginger and pineapple dish with chicken. Glad we tried it, but wouldn’t order again as there wasn’t anything that I would consider a standout.

 

One dish that I would order again and again would be the seafood rice bowl. It comes with scallops, shrimps, squid, mussels, bamboo shoot, scallion, mushroom, and Thai gravy sauce all over jasmine rice. All of the seafood is cooked to perfection and this is a meal that you can order for lunch, and then finish for dinner as the portion is that generous. My mouth is watering just thinking about it!

The other highlight of the meal, were the non-alcoholic drink specials for $4. I ordered the Pink Lady with Pearls (image on the left), which tasted like candy. My friend ordered the Iced Chrysanthemum Tea (which brought back childhood memories of my mom making me chrysanthemum tea whenever I had a cold sore—not only was it supposedly good for you, but it was like drinking honey!).

Pros:

Big, open space with booth seating available.

Nice, large restroom.

Attentive service.

Cons:

Wish they offered dinner special pricing.

Final Thoughts

Will definitely go back for their seafood rice bowl lunch special, and to try their other specialty lunch drinks.

As  a side note:

I did return a few days later to try their takeout. I ordered the duck wrap appetizer. (Note to self: don’t every order again for takeout as it turns into mess in the container by the time you get it home!)

 

And for the entrée, I went for the black noodles (broad rice noodle with egg and broccoli) with tofu. They also were kind enough to lightly fry the tofu for me, as it is usually served soft. The black noodle is basically chow fun, but it seemed sweetened with what tasted like duck sauce. Would order again, but it definitely does not measure up to the seafood rice bowl!