Spicez

Spicez at 1610 Wisconsin Avenue NW is an Indian specialty food shop on the upper Georgetown commercial block, between the Koryouri Urara Japanese restaurant at 1608 and the Simply Banh Mi at 1624. The Indian specialty food shop format serves the Georgetown residential community with the spices, prepared foods, and grocery items that the Indian culinary tradition requires and that the standard Georgetown grocery stores, even the well-stocked ones, do not carry with the specificity and freshness that the Indian kitchen needs.

The spice component of the Indian kitchen is the most technically complex in any culinary tradition: the thirty-plus spices that the Indian pantry maintains, from the whole spices of the cardamom, clove, and cinnamon bark through the ground preparations of the turmeric, coriander, and cumin, to the compound spice mixes of the garam masala, chaat masala, and sambhar powder, require sourcing from specialized importers and storage conditions that preserve their volatile oils. The difference between fresh ground spices and the pre-ground products that have been on a supermarket shelf for six months is the difference between an aromatic curry and a flat one.

The prepared food component of an Indian specialty shop serves the Georgetown customer who wants the chaat and the fresh Indian snacks that the restaurant provides in a sit-down context but in a take-home format. The samosas, the bhel puri, and the dal preparations that an Indian food shop prepares fresh daily are the foods that the Indian residential community relies on for the quick meal and the snack that the home kitchen produces in India but that the American grocery store does not stock.

Hours run from 10am most days and 11am Sunday. The Indian grocery and specialty food shop in the Georgetown commercial context also serves the non-Indian customer who has developed an interest in cooking Indian food at home and who needs access to the ingredients that the supermarket does not stock adequately. The Georgetown resident who has been to India or who has learned to cook from Indian friends or partners knows that the difference between a good curry and a great curry is often entirely in the spice quality: the freshness of the cumin, the fragrance of the cardamom, and the heat level of the specific red chili that the recipe calls for are all variables that the specialty shop manages and the supermarket does not. The prepared food component of Spicez serves the Georgetown working community who wants a lunch from the Indian food tradition in the quick-service format: the samosa, the bhel puri, and the dal preparation available by weight or by container for the customer who wants to take the food to the nearby park or waterfront. The upper Wisconsin Avenue address at 1610 is between the Koryouri Urara Japanese restaurant and the Simply Banh Mi, in the commercial block that serves the residential Georgetown and Glover Park communities who use upper Wisconsin Avenue as their neighborhood shopping and dining street. Hours run from 10am most days and 11am Sunday.