Essence of Spice

Essence of Spice grinds and dry-roasts its own spice blends, and sells them by the jar to take home. That is an unusual thing for a small-town restaurant to bother with, and it says where the kitchen puts its attention. This is North Indian cooking on Muskoka Road South, in downtown Gravenhurst, run by the Singh family, who opened it in 2023 after years in the restaurant trade further south. The spice work is not a garnish on the story; it is the story, and it runs through nearly everything that leaves the kitchen.

The menu is long and built to be shared. The tandoor turns out Chicken Burra, a Delhi-style Mughlai bird finished with onions, lemon, and coriander; Paneer Tikka made from cheese the kitchen sets in-house; and a six-ounce salmon Fish Tikka that is a rarer sight than the chicken. The curries cover the familiar and the less so — Butter Chicken and Chicken Tikka Masala for the first-timer, both built on chicken marinated a full twenty-four hours, alongside Karahi Gosht, Handi Chicken slow-cooked in a clay pot, and a Lamb or Goat Madras with real heat. Breads range from Garlic Naan to a Peshwari Naan stuffed with coconut, raisins, and almonds. Vegetarians are not left with a single token plate: Palak Paneer, Shahi Paneer, Aloo Gobhi, Kabuli Chana Masala, and a dhaba-style daal are all on the board, several of them vegan.

What ties the menu together is patience. The butter chicken marinates for a day before it meets the grill; the mango chutney cooks down slowly over several hours; the carrot halwa is simmered in milk until it thickens. Combined with the house-ground spice blends and the in-house paneer and chutneys, it adds up to a kitchen doing the slow, unglamorous prep that a busier operation would buy in. For a restaurant in a resort town, where much of the dining leans seasonal and quick, that is a deliberate choice about what kind of place to be.

The restaurant is a family operation in the fullest sense. Madan and Poonam Singh own it; their children, Akshay and Akansha, work in it. The family came from Delhi and spent years running a restaurant in Ajax before bringing the kitchen north to Gravenhurst, and local reporting at the opening kept returning to how warmly the town took them in. That welcome cuts both ways — a family that has cooked this food for a living for a long time, landing in a place that wanted exactly this.

The menu rewards a table that orders like a group. Start with samosas or an Aloo Tikki Chaat piled with yogurt and chutney, put a tandoori plate and two curries in the middle, and anchor the whole thing with naan and a biryani — the food is meant to be passed around rather than plated per person. It travels, too: the curries, breads, and rice hold up well enough that the restaurant leans on an online ordering flow for takeout, and a container of butter chicken with garlic naan makes a straightforward weeknight dinner at home. There is beer on the list, though the cooking carries the meal on its own.

Downtown Gravenhurst runs on a summer economy, and much of what feeds it is built for the season. Essence of Spice keeps a different clock: open Tuesday through Sunday, lunch into dinner, the same curries and breads in February as in July. A family kitchen grinding its own garam masala on a Muskoka main street of patios and ice-cream windows is not what most visitors go looking for. The spice shelf near the door closes the loop — taste the blend in the butter chicken, then carry the same jar home.