Spice Avenue

Tonight Trevor and I had dinner at Spice Avenue, 1066 Upper James St. in Hamilton, On. 905-383-2888 (open 7 days a week)

The restaurant had a very nice decor, very clean and not overly bright. I loved the bird cages which held lights in the centre of the restaurant. Our waitress was very friendly and helpful.

We decided to have the meal which was 18.99 per person and included soup, an appetizer, entree, side dish and dessert. For the soup I had wonton which truly was the best wonton soup I have ever had. Usually I find that the broth has no flavour when I order this soup but theirs was full of flavour, which included one of my favourites, cilantro. Trevor had the Tom Yum Shrimp soup which had shrimp in it and was a spicier selection. He felt the soup was actually kind of bland and his comment to it was ``it was alright``.

For my appetizer I had the fried spring roll, which was one large spring roll with a side of pickled dikon and carrot on a bed of lettuce. Trevor had the fresh shrimp roll which came with a peanut sauce on the side.

For my entree I ordered Black Pepper Beef with sticky rice. It was spicy but not overly. The vegetables in it were so fresh. It had green pepper, onion, red pepper and carrot. The rice was served in a side dish and was a large serving. Trevor had the Vietnamese yellow curry which included chicken, potatoes and onion. He also had the sticky rice for his side. We both really enjoyed our entrees and were impressed with the freshness of everything.

The dessert we had was an ice cream cake. It was the perfect size and there were so many flavours going on in this cake and textures. The top portion was vanilla ice cream, the centre almost like a crunchy chocolate cake and the bottem had chocolate ice cream.

The presentation of all the dishes was very nice. If I were to complain about anything it would be the coffee. I would suggest you bypass that.

We definitely would go back to this restaurant.