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  • Margaret Street, Toowoomba City

Indian Fine Dining in Toowoomba

A licensed dining room, a clay tandoor that runs all service, and a kitchen that has been cooking North Indian food in this town since 2012.

Ice n Spice is a licensed Indian fine dining restaurant at 177A-179 Margaret Street in the Toowoomba CBD, open for lunch from 11:30am and dinner from 4:30pm, seven days. The kitchen is run by Jasvinder, a chef from Rajasthan, and cooks to order from a clay tandoor rather than reheating from a bain-marie. Book on 07 4659 7777 or reserve online.

What fine dining actually means at an Indian restaurant

The phrase gets used loosely, so here is what it means in this room. Dishes are cooked when you order them, not held. Gravies are built separately rather than poured from one shared base. Meat for the tandoor is marinated the day before, because yoghurt and spice need hours to do anything useful to a lamb cutlet.

It also means the room matters. There are tablecloths, there is a bar, and there is enough space between tables that you can hear the person across from you. Plenty of very good Indian food in Australia is served under fluorescent light next to a drinks fridge. That is not what this is.

None of that makes the food precious. Portions are generous and the spice levels go where you want them.

The tandoor does most of the heavy lifting

A tandoor is a clay oven that runs somewhere north of 400 degrees. Nothing in a domestic kitchen gets close, which is why tandoori chicken cooked at home never quite works. The heat seals the outside of the meat in a couple of minutes and leaves the inside still juicy.

Our Royal Entrees come out of it. Lamb cutlets, seekh kebab, chicken tikka. If you have only ever had tandoori food from a takeaway container, order one of these first and you will understand what the fuss is about.

The same oven bakes the breads. Garlic naan, cheese naan, paneer naan, aloo stuffed naan and a chicken tikka naan that is close to a meal on its own. They come out blistered and they are best in the first two minutes, so we send them as they are ready rather than holding them for the mains.

Rajasthani cooking on a Toowoomba menu

Jasvinder is from Rajasthan, the desert state in India’s north-west, and there are dishes on our list that most Australian Indian restaurants do not carry. Laal Maas is the obvious one. It is a fiery Rajasthani mutton curry built on dried red chillies and yoghurt, traditionally a hunting dish, and it is not a mild curry pretending to be spicy.

Elsewhere the menu covers the regional range properly. Goan fish curry with its coconut and tamarind sourness. Lamb dhansak, which is Parsi and comes with lentils. Rogan josh from Kashmir. Chicken vindaloo, which is Goan and Portuguese in origin rather than the heat challenge it became in British curry houses.

Ask the floor staff where a dish comes from. They will tell you, and the answer usually explains why it tastes the way it does.

The bar

We are licensed, with beer, wine, spirits and cocktails. Indian food and wine is a harder pairing than most menus admit. High tannin reds fight chilli. Off-dry whites and cold lager do not. If you are ordering something with real heat in it, say so when you order drinks and we will point you somewhere sensible.

Four dishes to order if you want to see what the kitchen can do

  • Lamb cutlets from the tandoor. The clearest demonstration of the oven.
  • Laal Maas. Rajasthan on a plate. Genuinely hot, so order it knowing that.
  • Malai kofta. The vegetarian dish that converts people who think vegetarian Indian food is a compromise.
  • Lamb biryani. Rice and meat cooked together and sealed, not stirred together at the end.

Add a garlic naan and a dal makhani for the table. Dal makhani is slow-cooked black lentils with butter and cream, and it is the dish that quietly ties an Indian meal together.

Booking and what to expect

Weekends book out, particularly Friday and Saturday dinner. Mid-week is quieter and is the better time to come if you want to take your time over a long meal.

Tell us about dietary requirements when you book rather than on arrival. We run full vegetarian, vegan and gluten free options, and the kitchen handles them better with notice. Larger groups need a bit of planning, so get in touch ahead of time.

Lunch is a different animal to dinner. The lunch thali gets you two dishes with rice and bread for between $20 and $25, and it comes out fast enough for a work break.

Visit Us
Address177A–179 Margaret Street, Toowoomba City QLD 4350
Phone07 4659 7777
Emailinfo@restaurantstoowoomba.com.au
Lunch11:30am to 2pm, seven days
Dinner4:30pm to 9pm, seven days
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Common questions

Both, but the dining room is the main event. Ice n Spice is a licensed sit-down restaurant with a full bar on Margaret Street, and it also does takeaway. The same kitchen cooks for both.

For Friday and Saturday dinner, yes. Mid-week you can usually walk in, but a quick call on 07 4659 7777 saves you standing at the door.

There isn’t a formal one. Most people come smart casual. Nobody will turn you away for wearing jeans.
A working clay tandoor used through every service, a chef trained in Rajasthan, regional dishes like Laal Maas that most menus skip, and a licensed bar rather than BYO only.
You choose. Most curries are offered mild, medium or hot. Laal Maas is genuinely hot by design and we will say so when you order it.
Yes to all three. The vegetarian main section is a full menu in its own right, vegan dishes are marked, and gluten free dishes carry a GF marker.
Lunch runs 11:30am to 2pm and dinner 4:30pm to 9pm, seven days a week.
There is street parking on Margaret Street and council car parks a short walk away in the CBD. Street parking is tight at peak dinner times.

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