Spice Roots

A single order at Spice Roots can start as North Indian comfort and end somewhere closer to a Chinese takeout counter. Butter Chicken and Garlic Naan land first, rich and familiar; then Chilli Chicken arrives dry and sharp from the Hakka side of the same menu, and the meal has quietly switched cuisines without leaving the table. This Guelph kitchen on Kortright Road West runs both lanes in earnest — a full North Indian repertoire and a genuine Indo-Chinese one — and treats the move between them as ordinary rather than novelty.

The Indian side is the deeper of the two. The tandoor turns out Tandoori Chicken, Chicken Tikka, Tandoori Shrimp, and a Haryali Chicken marinated with yogurt, mint, and Thai chillies before it meets the heat. Curries run from Butter Chicken through Dal Makhni, slow-cooked black lentils finished with cream, to Paneer Lababdar, a tomato-and-onion paneer curry the kitchen treats as a vegetarian anchor rather than an afterthought. Breads carry their own weight: Garlic Naan for the table, and an Amritsari Kulcha stuffed with paneer, potato, cauliflower, coriander, and chickpeas. Biryani comes in chicken, goat, lamb, or vegetarian pulao. Then the menu turns to the Hakka list — Chicken Manchurian, Veggie Manchurian, Chilli Fish — where Indian spicing meets Chinese-style gravy over steamed rice.

The starters are where the two sides shake hands before the mains arrive. Samosas come crisp and stuffed with spiced potato and peas, served with chutney; Aloo Tikki delivers pan-fried potato patties; and the fryer turns out Chicken Pakora in chickpea batter alongside Fish Pakora and Paneer Pakora for the table that wants to graze before it commits. It is an opening volley that suits the way the menu is meant to be eaten — shared, in rounds, with a few plates landing while the curries are still being decided.

What the breadth signals is a kitchen built for the way people actually eat over a week rather than for a single showpiece plate. The vegetarian path is real, not a courtesy: Chana Masala, Palak Paneer, Bhindi Masala cooked with ginger and garlic, Baingan Bharta, and a stack of pakoras give a meatless table a full order instead of one safe fallback. There is a breakfast register too, anchored by Cholle Bhature — spiced chickpeas with two fluffy fried breads, chutney, and achaar — that points the menu earlier into the day than most curry houses bother to go. Every category splits cleanly enough that a group can build across curry, bread, rice, tandoor, and Hakka without anyone settling.

That practicality extends to how the restaurant gets used. It opened in 2014 and has settled into the Kortright and Edinburgh district as the kind of place a household orders from on a Tuesday, not the kind it saves for an occasion. An address-matched ordering page keeps pickup current and steady, and the menu is engineered to travel — curries, breads, biryani, and fried starters hold up in a bag as well as on a plate. The hours follow the same logic, with a midday lunch service and a dinner service Tuesday through Friday and longer single stretches on the weekend.

None of this rests on a marquee chef or a founding legend, and the restaurant does not pretend otherwise. Its case is made in the range of the menu and the steadiness of the favourites: the Butter Chicken that reads as a reliable first order, the Paneer Lababdar that lets a vegetarian lead the meal, and the Chilli Chicken waiting one section over when the same table decides it wants the Indo-Chinese lane after all.