Sweet & Spicy

this place has gone down the toilet, first time i went there years ago it was clean and vibrant place, recently i i went there twice, it was dirty, unfriendly and empty, my trainers were sticking to the floor it was so dirty and when i touched the food trey my fingers were sticking to it, i ate some onion bajis and had food poisoning kept me up up all night, real shame but the place is not what it used to be.

Visited Brick Lane during the doomed hours between 3PM-​4PM and therefore, the famed «street» for Bangladeshi food wasn’t really happening. I was out there look for a good hearty doner kebab and ended up with a kebab roll. It was hot (curtesy of a microwave) and served with a spicy hot sauce which was unexpected. Really missed the yogurt/​white sauce I usually have with grilled spiced meats. Regardless, the folks working here we nice; place was clean and allowed for a sit-​down dine-​in meal without fuss nor being the only patron eating at this odd hour.

It looks like a greasy spoon if you compare it to other curry places around Brick Lane, but despite its slightly unappealing look, the food there is really good and cheap.
No matter what time of the day I go there, it’s pretty filled up with people. It seems that the place effortlessly (one of the few places in Brick Lane without touts outside convincing you they serve the best curry in East End) attracts a good mixture of locals and tourists.
Last time I tried 2 vegetarian currys of the day (spinach and paneer and cauliflauer/​aubergine and paneer) and both were delicious, but honestly I would actually be happy just eating the plain pilau rice, it’s so good. And it all cost me £5.
The good thing is you can see all the dishes before you order, so no surprises upon arrival (for those of you who are less familiar with Indian food).
The staff is very friendly and quick to serve, but taking away the dirty plates left by the previous customer is not something they seem to think is necessary before serving another.
The décor is quite amusing. You’ll find here reproduction of an 18^th century bucolic English landscape painting, a collection of Olympic posters from the past and advertisements of Indian cigarettes featuring Bangla wrestlers, that probably hang there since the 1960s (the place prides itself in being one of the first 3 restaurants opened in Brick Lane:) If that’s not enough, you can enjoy your meal watching Bollywood soaps and listen to the latest Indian hits at the same time:)

I was disappointed with this place. I’d gone based on the other Unilocal reviews and the hope of getting some reasonable food for a bit less money, but I didn’t save much and felt like the food I got was really lacklustre.
Okay, so this place probably is cheaper than the others, saving you maybe a pound or two on a curry and about 50p on some of the breads. But I’d question if it’s really worth it. The lower prices definitely impact on the food.
It’s served from big metal trays at the front of the store and then reheated in a microwave and brought over to you. I have nothing in theory against keeping the curries like this to server them, unless it affects the taste. Here it affected the taste, meaning that instead of sizzling hot curry that tasted as though it’d been on the boil for a few hours just before, you get something that was just kind of warm and felt like it had been made a long time ago.
The lamb korai had meat that was really tough, so there was no way you could break apart the big pieces with a fork and they just tasted dry and chewy. The sauces with them was thick and not too oily, but it didn’t have an especially exciting blend of spices. The Korai flavour was there, but it was a really muted version of it and nothing to get especially excited about. Rather than sitting in with the other flavours, the spice also stuck out starkly.
Saag (Spinach) dishes are some of my favourite of North Indian cuisine because the spinach can have such a strong, earthy, rich, vegetable flavour. Here though, the spinach in the sauce just tasted a little bit watery and limp.
We also had chapatti and paratha, both of which were microwaved to warm them. Of the two, the chapatti fared better. The paratha, because it had been fried and was more oily, came out of the microwave with that soggy greasiness that sausage rolls get when they’re reheated the same way.
Nothing was absolutely terrible (Hence 2* and not 1). It was just that I wouldn’t want to come back here in a hurry. I felt like this place could make much better food if it didn’t try so hard to keep it really cheap. If a bit more care was put into the preparation of the curries, and they were made that morning instead of days before, then all would be a lot better.

Very authentic, tasty and cheap.
Don’t try and figure out what you want from the menu — just ask! Plenty of seating on a Saturday evening — I think I was the only person eating in — everyone else seemed to be locals getting take-​aways.

I used to go every single week to Sweet & Spicy while living in the area, and continued to go regularly for a few years after moving away from the East End. I loved it, as I found it to be a very relaxed place and they allowed customers to bring in their beers and wine bottles. From about a year ago the quality of the food started to decrease considerably so I stopped going as often until I stopped going alltogether. The amount of salt in the chana (chick peas), and in the prawn curry, which were my favourite dishes, seemed to increase beyond reason, and I started to notice the smells from toilet even when sitting far from it.

In my opinion, this restaurant serves the best curry in London. You wouldn’t know it to look at it from the outside with it’s cheap red paint job or the inside with its pictures of wrestlers on the walls and I think that’s one of the reasons I love it so much, it’s like I’m uncovering a hidden secret.
The prices are cheap and a curry, rice and lassi will set you back around £7.00. Try the tasty chicken curry and the pilau rice cooked with ghee and sultanas. Whilst most places in Brick Lane employ touts to tempt you in with special deals, Sweet and Spicy caters for the locals and therefore doesn’t need to employ these tatics. It may call itself a restaurant, but the place resembles a canteen with large vats of curry and formica tables. I’ve never had a meal here that hasn’t left me completly and utterly satisfied. This is definitely the best place in the capital for curry.

If you like curries and antique olympics poster, then you will like sweet and spicy. As others have said it is seriously cheap. A lamb Biryani, some veggie curry, pompadom, chutney and a coke came to slightly more than 10 pounds and we were all stuffed by the end.
The food is served in a quasi canteen style; you stand in front of tubs of curries on a heating trolley while the restaurant workers (i am not sure what to call them, cooks? hosts? servers? certainly not waiters.) tell you what is on offer. You choose and they put the chosen curry/​rice/​nan in one of the several microwaves/​ovens/​heating apparatus on offer. They take money. You take the microwaved food and sit down and shove it in.
For microwaved food, the meal was surprisingly delicioius. The lamb in my biryani was a bit tough, but the taste was pretty balanced and not too spicy or hot. I supposed that the fried shallots and garlic would be crispy if not microwaved, it would have improved on the texture of the dish. Our veggie curry and bean «special» curry were delicious and the boy’s spicy lamb (some how 3 of them managed to get the same meal, seperately!) was pretty spectacular with succulent bits of lamb smothered in a slightly hot sauce. Another of the party had said reconstituted meat on stick and he seemed to have enjoyed it very much too.
2 of us did feel a bit unwell later in the evening, but not sure if it is because we have been drinking most of the afternoon away.

It’s cheap. It’s seriously cheap. They do a lump of reconstituted meat in a wrap with amazing spicy sauce and relish. They have a wide selection of tubs of dirty dirty curries. Some of them are seriously and secretly hot and you will melt. It’s on Brick Lane and it is about the one good (but bad for you) place there.

yuummmmm this is definitely the best indian/​pakistani food ive ever had. the prices just make everything even more tasty. i dream about this place. theres an abundance of indian places in the silicon valley but they all seem very similar and VERY few are on par with sweet & spicy. if you can only visit one restaurant on brick lane this is the one i recommend. i just had their curries. so filling. satiatiiing

Good, unpretentious food. I got a tasty curry here at a good price, on a recommendation. The seating area beyond the serving counter is canteen-​like: pretty basic, spartan even, with only some very old film posters on the wall for decoration.

Watch carefully as you traipse down Brick Lane. How many of the local Bangla people do you see stopping and talking to the curry house touts and then taking them up on their various offers?
None. So where are they going?
Like Attenborough at his finest, I carefully stalked the Brick Lane locals one evening from the safety of my bicycle and found that Sweet & Spicy was their watering hole — their place to dine without the hassle of touts and deals. It was the Brick Lane I’d been waiting for — authentic, cheap, interesting and hassle free.
So here’s the lowdown: Sweet & Spicy is a small canteen with plastic tables, decorated with strange posters of famous Indian/​Bangla wrestlers and/​or kabbadi players. It’s not what you’d normally expect to see on the walls. The food is served up from the front — you buy it there and ship it back to your table on a tray. It feels a bit like a greasy-​spoon or even being back at school lunch but without the bully right behind you (unless the wrestler poster counts).
The menu is miniscule but the choices rotate daily and the portions are hearty, heavy and start at well under a Fiver. They have a few mains, a selection of small dishes and breads and there’s a handful of soft drinks to choose from if you haven’t had the brains to BYO Cobra Beer.
Factoring all this together I’d put Sweet & Spicy at the very top of London cheap eats, and the perfect spot for a quick unfussy curry. I particularly recommend the Biriyani — it’s a lesson in how to get a mammoth amount of first-​class food for a minimum amount of moolah.

I’m all for authenticity, originality and atmosphere when I eat out. In my mind, these factors override the actual quality of the food and, if I’m honest, the hygiene factor too. Taking this into account, I highly recommend you visit Sweet and Spicy on Brick Lane.
I know, I know, you’ve run the gauntlet of the drunkard-​baiting Bengali maitre d’s already. Haven’t we all. But I was pleasantly surprised by Sweet’n’Spicy when a friend introduced me to this unassuming little spot recently.
It’s basically the Bengali version of a greasy caff. There are plastic chairs, lovely, helpful and smiley staff, food served carvery-​style in shiny metal ban-​maries, a communal jug of free water and, this is the clincher for me, lots of local Bengalis getting busy with their dinners. It’s damn cheap too. 50p for a samosa, £1.50 to £2.50 for a few scoops of properly spiced dhal or okra curry with enough rice to fill you up twice over. No Cobra (or any) beers served.

great value, and some great snacks, love thier somosa, stopped by there the other sunday and being fed up with the touts outside most of the places nearby, decided to have a curry in there, nothing fancy no table cloths or candles, just enjoyable food at a good price,

In diesem sehr einfachen Restaurant mit Take-​way-​Möglichkeit bestellt man sich seine Speisen an der Theke, kann sie dabei auch kurz in Augenschein nehmen. Man bestellt sein Essen in Einzelteilen, so daß man auf den Reis verzichten kann, stattdessen Poppadums oder Naan auswählt.
Das Essen scheint mir authentisch. Wir hatten drei unterschiedliche Gerichte, alle hatten eine ordentliche Schärfe. Wer nur mildes indisches Essen mag, sollte dahingehend den netten Herrn hinter der Theke fragen.
Manche Essen sind sofort fertig, manche benötigen 10 Minuten. Man bekommt immer eine Kanne Wasser hingestellt, eine Portion Joghurt bzw. Mango Lassi sind in meinen Augen aber auch empfehlenswert.
Das Lokal liegt in einer Straße, die fast nur von indischen Restaurants, Schnellimbissen und Lebensmittelläden bevölkert ist. Dort kann man sehr gutes indisches Essen vermuten. Die Restaurants haben alle Türsteher, die einen in den Laden ziehen wollen. Wer das wie wir nicht mag verzichtet gerne auf die wohlgestaltete Umgebung und die Tellergerichte und labt sich in diesem einfachen Restaurant am köstlichen indischen Essen.
Die Speisen bewegen sich zwischen 2.20 und 4.40 Pfund. Die vegetarischen Gerichte sind dabei natürlich günstiger, weil kein teures Fleisch benutzt wird. Aber gegen ein köstliches Spinatgericht mit Kartoffel ist doch auch für den Nicht-​Vegetarier nichts einzuwenden.