Spice

The one thing I can agree with the other reviewers on is that Spice seems to be deserted most of the time. In fact, I’m writing this review because I’m hoping that some more information might bring more people in there and prevent the place from going out of business.
Spice is very close to my new work location, so a bunch of us tried it for lunch. I’ve been back about six times since.
Food:
The food is good. I’ve personally had the red curry beef, coconut chicken curry, basil chicken, and chicken pancit. The curries are my favorites, and I would qualify them as «yummy». Others I’ve gone with have enjoyed the eggplant/​tofu dish (veg), stir-​fry (with chicken, but you can get it with other stuff), and ribs. I’d avoid the american/​mexican specials — I have no idea why they even have those. A co-​worker got the tri-​tip steak, and while not bad it was pretty boring — just sliced tri-​tip, stir-​fried veggies and mash. The portions are very large, the vegetables seem to be fresh and the dishes come steaming hot. Oh, and the dishes are not greasy, more «fresh» — another reviewer mentioned this as a negative but for me it’s a plus.
Service:
Well, often we’re the only people in the place, so we don’t have a problem with getting the server’s attention — haha… The service is fine but quirky. I’ve had the same waitress every time, and she’s incredibly nice but doesn’t speak English very well — she can have trouble understanding questions so just make sure she’s getting what you’re asking. Other tips: They apparently make all the dishes to order with one chef. I’m pretty sure it’s not the waitress because I’ve heard the chef ring a bell when she’s in the dining room (she’s not pulling a Clark Kent/​Superman routine). In my experience, the food doesn’t take a long time to start coming out. It will however take from 5 – 10 minutes to complete coming out — they come one dish at a time until they’re done. They seem to be improving but as long as you’re cool if people start eating before everyone has food you’ll be fine. Also, she won’t approach you about the check until you ask her for it — just wave her over when you’re ready.
Atmosphere:
Strange, but since I’m there for lunch I don’t really care. It looks like the place used to be a burger joint or something (vanilla tile floor, drop ceiling, etc.) and now they’ve just scattered some «Asian» artifacts through the place. They also sell a bunch of carved masks and random artwork which is laid out on the sides of the dining area. Somewhat amusing: Whenever we show up, the waitress puts on a CD containing Cat Stevens, Cyndi Lauper, and I think Blue Oyster Cult, among others. She’s so well-​intentioned we haven’t yet had the heart to tell her we’d actually prefer the instrumental traditional music that was playing when we walked in… Anyway, don’t be surprised when «Moonshadow» starts up.
Prices:
Entrees are between $ 7 – 12. Not bad considering I can’t finish the dish most of the time.
Bottom line:
Someone please go there so they don’t shut down. I like having a yummy place so close for lunch. They should hire an interior designer, give the wait staff traditional server training and English lessons, and focus the menu around their strengths. If you can look past those needed improvements, it’s a great lunch and probably casual dinner (not «dining» right now) place.

Food here is good. Other reviewers have complained that it is not authentic enough, but I’m not surprised, as the restaurant is «Asian Fusion». Spice serves a spectrum of Asian dishes… California style (small portions, fresh ingredients).
The new brunch deserves some mention — again, it’s California style. If you’re disappointed that the food is not greasy enough, go somewhere else! It’s not easy to find Pancit and nice fluffy chocolate chip pancakes on the same menu.
Prices are quite reasonable ($ 10.95 for the Caramelized Salmon) by Bay Area standards.
The service is weak. This is to be expected. Say you’re a waiter looking for work and you see an empty restaurant looking for help… no thanks! If the owner can increase the business, better service will follow. She could accomplish this by simply making the signage on Castro more visible! The place is practically hidden.

Well, I really wanted to give Spice five stars. We «discovered» Spice during one of Mountain View’s many summer street fairs, and were impressed by the pitch that the owner gave us (they were tabling at the street fair, pushing their new brunch hours).
Finally, we’d found an alternative to. .. what’s that place called. .. the one we always go to? Oh yes, Hobees. Nothing against Hobees; but, variety is nice, and Spice was promising some good sounding Asian grub for brunch on the weekends. Needless to say, we wasted no time making a date to wake up early on the weekend.
GOOD FOR US, BAD FOR THEM; the place was empty last Saturday morning. And I mean empty, there was us, the waiter, the owner, and the person the owner was interviewing in the restaurant. I assume the cook was there too, somewhere. And, don’t let me mislead you, it was after 10am, and people were walking by, they just weren’t coming in.
So, THE FOOD. We only tried two dishes, the apple basil omelet and the longanisa, egg, and fried rice dish. Well, you can’t ruin longanisa; that was a safe dish. The rice. .. fried rice. .. that came with both dishes completely lacked grease. Maybe that’s a personal preference; but, fried rice needs to taste greasy and fattening, not like it was cooked in Pam. And the apple basil omelet; damn, that sounded like a great idea. And, it was. .. well, except it still had that «clean» taste that the rice had. Maybe it needed butter or fat or grease or something.
And now, THE DOWN SIDE. As I said before, we were the ONLY customers in the restaurant the whole time we were there. The owner could have, should have come over and checked on us, let us know that we’re important to her business. .. because we are. Every single customer is important to a small business. Never once did we feel like more than just another. .. well, how about never truly welcomed. Personally, I like to have weekend brunches at someplace that feels comforting and homely, not someplace were your digested in, fed, and spat back out like just another piece of food.…
Anyways, the food was mediocre, the service was less than mediocre, and the price was a little better than mediocre. I think three stars is really a stretch; but, two stars would imply that I disliked Spice. I didn’t, they were just very MEDIOCRE.

walked by here the other day and just wanted to find a quick fix.
I have to say that the green papaya salad is pretty good, tangy.
Will have to try the curry dish next time.
4 stars — decent setting, nice and quiet, not too crowded.
2 stars — I went in asking for a take out, the waiter comes back and says that the owner wants to charge 50 cents extra for the box (for Take OUT?!) ok, fine, but then the owner comes out saying that they ran out of one of the garnish ingredients in the dish. which is not that bad in itself, but added to the 50 cents unreasonable sur-​charge, and missing ingredient, I said forget it, not ordering it anymore and walked out.
I understand the owner’s desire to make more profit, by charging extra this and that, but I feel that she’s charging me extra but not giving me the full dish, and she didn’t offer to waive the fee because of the lack of one of the ingredients! what service!
just to be fair to the food and the setting, 3 stars averaged.
not going back for me though, period.

I used to think that perhaps this place was deserted due to its location. It is away from the main restaurant scene on Castro. But today that theory was laid to rest. We entered at 12:30 just as two people were leaving. In hindsight, I’m not even sure that they were necessarily patrons.
The food: was sub-​par.
–papaya salad did not have a nice blend of sweet, salty and tangy. Instead it was overwhelmed by vinegar and? fish sauce. Something detracted from what is typically a light refreshing salad and left it having a somewhat rotten smell.
–chicken coconut soup was waaay too heavy
–satay was overcooked, didn’t even want to take it to go even though I would be working into the night without dinner
Waiter: kind of pushy. Insistent that we take menus though we stated clearly that work typically provided our lunches, that we would take a card, and that we did not want the menu. Asked us to bring it to our friends?! Why would we recommend to friends that which we ourselves did not enjoy? We’ve got reputations to uphold!
Definitely not going back. I think this place is empty for a reason. Make that several reasons.

I’ve been lurking on this site for over a year now, but no experience (good or bad) has ever inspired me to write a review. But, that changed when I went to Spice on Friday. 8 of us from work went there to celebrate a co-worker’s birthday. Let’s just say that it went to the pits from the second we sat down. Let me just give your the main issues, since I am limited to 5000 choice words:
1. The place was a bit drab. There was only 1 waiter and, for a while, we thought that he was the only person working in the whole place (although eventually we saw 2 – 3 people meandering around in the back). There were only about 6 – 7 other people in the restaurant. Nonetheless, for our party of 8, we were asked to SHARE menus! The menus were not exactly fancy (just printed on regular paper and put into the menu covers, not the nice covers either!).
THE NEXT FEW ITEMS ALL PERTAIN TO THE MOST INCOMPETENT WAITER EVER!!!
2. When he eventually came to take our order (it was probably 10 minutes since sitting down), we wanted to place both our appetizer and entrée orders to expedite the process. He refused. He said that («for memory’s sake») he was only going to take our appetizer order. WTF? Fine, so my boss asked him how many lumpia/​springrolls come in an order, and his answer was «one.» So, my boss ordered 6 orders of EACH for us. I thought to myself «1 spring roll for $ 5.95?» Sure enough, when the appetizers eventually came out, each order had 5 – 6 pieces EACH. We had way too many orders, and, when questioned about it, the waiter replied, «That is one lumpia/​spring roll.» Must be foot-​long lumpias! Duh, now any relatively bright person would understand what we were asking when we asked how many of each items per order.
3. It took another 10 minutes for him to return to take our entrée order, and another 10 minutes after that for him to take our drink order. About the latter, when my boss went up to him at the counter and asked for a couple of extra glasses, he said «I can’t do it right now, I am in the middle of something.» She pointed out that they were RIGHT BEHIND him and within reach, but he would not give them to her! What an ass.
4. We arrived at the restaurant at 12noon, and, by 1:35pm, our entrees still had not arrived. My boss and another coworker had to leave by then for a meeting, so the rest of us sat there waiting it out. I think it was like 1:45pm before we «started» getting our food. I say «started» because ½ of us got our food while the rest of us had to wait another 10 minutes to get our food. Eventually, when the rest of the food came, my order was forgotten and the waiter told me «I’ll go get it right now.» 15 more minutes passed as I scavenged food off everyone else’s plates and ate more of the million lumpia/​spring rolls we had, and I just couldn’t take it any more. I asked the waiter if my order was coming, and he said, «It will come, it’s being prepared.» I told him that it had been 15 minutes since the rest of the people got their order and over 2 hours since I had gotten there. He just looked at me blankly, and repeated «It’s being prepared.» If ever I wanted to shed my peaceful aura and beat the heck out of someone, this was the moment! (Don’t mess with hungry people!)
5. Now, I am not a whiner about service (even though my husband works as a waiter in a fine dining setting and is super anal about service, I have managed to remain the objective one). I have been to the nicest restaurants to the dumpiest, and never never have I ever experienced such bad service. Bad service is one thing, but SLOW bad service mixed in with a bad attitude and complete incompetence is totally aggravating! The three people behind us were there about as long as us too.
6. When we eventually got our bill (it took the waiter about 15 minutes to add it up), my very diplomatic coworker told him that we would NOT be giving him the 18% cited on the menu for parties over 6. He had the nerve to tell her that it was «not optional» and questioned whether we had made reservations. What the heck does that matter!!! We asked to speak to the owner, who was a bit nicer, but also asked if we had made reservations (we had). If they couldn’t handle such a large party, they should’ve told us in the beginning… if that is what they were implying. She said so sorry, but they got so busy. My coworkers pointed out that there was hardly anyone else in the joint. Eventually we got out of there… almost 3 hours after arriving…
7. I would give the food 2 – 3 stars. The lumpia was some of the worst we’d ever eaten (maybe because there were so many of them, haha) and the tofu in the eggplant dish was so overcooked it tasted like bread. The fried rice and curry dishes were also overly seasoned with salt and spices. The salmon was probably their best dish.
Now, if ever there was a reason for Unilocal to consider NO STARS or NEGATIVE STARS, this was the time.

I took my mom here for dinner tonight. We had the lime salmon, which was excellent but didn’t really taste like lime, and the crab fried rice, which was good, not too greasy, but it had way more bacon in it and almost no crab. This is a small kind of place, one waiter (make that one cute waiter), not too busy on a Saturday night. Overall it was a pleasant experience and I would definitely come back.

I had lunch here with two colleagues and thought the food was very good. We had the Carmelized Lime Salmon, Rainbow Shrimp and a special Chicken Noodle Soup, and shared them all (and I liked them all). Everything was cooked just right (esp. the salmon), and the flavors were diverse and well blended within any given dish.
All the food was cooked to order, so it was not a quick lunch, but we were not in a hurry and so it was well worth the wait. We were the only customers there, and as far as I can tell, the waiter was also the cook, and so I’m not sure how well lunch time service scales.
With respect to Añu T’s review, I’m not an expert on Asian cuisines, but I saw evidence of Filipino, Singaporean, Thai, Chinese, Japanese and Korean influences — as well as Vietnamese — on the menu, so I consider the Asian Fusion label accurate.
The only quibble I have about Spice is that they do not offer brown rice, but portions are generous and everything was very tasty, and I would come back again (perhaps for dinner as well) … but only when I’m not in a hurry.

They have quite good interior.
however, i was very disappointed when i ate their food.
maybe it’s just that i ordered a wrong entrée…
but i want to warn you not to order their pork dish. im not a picky person but it was really nasty… the dish was brought up in a real piggy bowl. The pork was cooked with lots of plant leaves and some type of stinky sauce which was very very salty.
Also my friend ordered a fried vegetables which was full of MSG… she had a bad headache and almost threw up an hour after because of the MSG syndrome, which some of you might have experienced after eating at some chinese buffet…
The lady was nice, i liked the interior and all, but the dishes i ordered were not even better than the food from panda express.

Whenever we have trouble deciding on what kind of food we feel like eating, «Asian fusion» is a good compromise since it encompasses a lot of our favorite types of food. Spice seems to be more of a Vietnamese restaurant that offers other thing, rather than a true Asian Fusion place.
We ordered take-​out and they packed it up very nicely – by the time we got home, our food was still steaming hot.
Their vegetarian offerings were limited, but they were able to make items on the menu vegetarian when requested (and they reassured me that they don’t assemble the items in advance, so no meat would come into contact with the vegetables).
–The green papaya salad (vegetarian) was tangy, just the way I like it
–The spring rolls (vegetarian) came with an interesting peanut butter spread.
–The eggplant with tofu was one of the best eggplant dishes I’ve ever had. It was not greasy, nor did not have an overwhelming amount of soy sauce… it was just yummy!
–The aromatic rice was not at all aromatic and was a disappointment (I think they accidentally just gave us plain rice).
Overall, I liked it a lot more than Spice Islands down the street.

We went to Spice the week before Christmas to celebrate the holidays, What we thought would be a simple restaurant meal turned into a festive banquet. The food and service was so good that we just hung around and ordered more food until we were too stuffed.
We started with Shanghai Lumpia and Vietnamese Spring Rolls. Two completely different approaches to a rolled appetizer. The lumpia were hot, crispy and fun to pop into the mouth. The Vietnamese spring rolls were a unique surprise. Soft and cool, they presented shrimp in a refreshing and tangy rice paper wrapper. These appetizers got us in the mood the what was in store.
We selected an inexpensive bottle of wine from Spice’s small, but varied wine list.
Our main courses started with Thai basil chicken, crab fried rice, what they called Carmelized Line Salmon. These were so good we ordered another entre, the red curry beef. This was a surprising combination of beef, mild red curry, potatoes and pineapple pieces. Each of these dishes presented flavors that stood out distinctly, yet blended together perfectly on the palate.
We should not have tried so many desserts, but we were on a roll… First came out an order of turon, a Philippine fried banana fritter, that we all shared. Hmmmm, mmmm, good. Then we split a couple of coconut crme brules. Who’d ever dream up this variation of a classic French dessert with a coconut Asian twist??? Genius! Finally, a classic Philippine dessert, halo halo, was a light sundae type dessert with just about everything but the kitchen sink on top.
The service was attentive, friendly, and fun.
The only negatives about Spice might be the typical downtown parking difficulties and an abience that was on the austere cold side.
All in all this was a great experience that we’ll be doing again.