Time was, in the late '80s, when an Indian restaurant near a cosmopolitan university in Kingston had to close its doors and move to the big city to find enough customers. Nowadays, fewer folks are intimidated by spicy fare with vowel-packed names like tabla time signatures. So much so that a little restaurant that modestly calls itself Not Just Snacks was packed just by word of mouth when it opened five months ago.

It started out across Hope Street two years earlier as the market Not Just Spices. When a bakery across the street became available, Mohammed and Samia Islam soon announced to their customers that they would be having an open house for their new restaurant. A salivating, curry-crazed throng of more than 600 showed up. Since then they haven't had to buy a single ad to keep the place busy.

There are only a half-dozen tables, seating 20 at most. But a lot of customers come for take-out, ordering from the 12 or so changing main dishes on the weekly menu and perusing the numerous appetizers and more than dozen desserts in the display cases. Desserts are more than the omnipresent honey-soaked gulab jumam and include both yellow and orange tangles that look like orgiastic heaps of Gummi Worms. These are jelebi, rice flour extrusions dipped in syrup. The desserts are so cheap that they're available only packaged several at a time.

Speaking of cheap, when have you ever seen appetizers going for a buck apiece? Hold on, I exaggerated. The meat-stuffed alu tikki, potato and pea patties, are $2 each. If you're eating there, you can go up to the counter to check out the appetite kick-starters and have them delivered to your table. You can make a nice little Indian tapas spread if you sample everything that looks unfamiliar, especially if you have them with the pani puri ($3.95) on the main menu. The latter consists of seven fried wheat flour puffs as thin as balloon skins. You nibble an opening and spoon in a hot mixture dominated by whole chickpeas, then pour on the tamarind chutney.

Other appetizers include veggie and mutton samosas, and sweet-spicy lilva kachori and the spicier fried patties, khasta kachori. There are two sorts of fritters: the batatadawada look like clam cakes but contain potato; and the vegetable pakoras ($6.50 per pound), which are thinner and crispier, from a looser batter of chickpea flour.

There were 11 main courses on the menu during our recent visit. They're only $4.95 to $6.95, yet are made to order rather than ladled from some steam table. There was only one available masala, bhindi masala, named for the complex blend of spices, which contained okra, onions, tomatoes, and peppers. There were three biryanis, though, vegetable, chicken and mutton. I had the latter and was pleased with my choice on two counts. First, there was a texture contrast from bits of vermicelli-thin noodles adding crunch to the rice; and secondly, the curried rice was scrumptious, populated by fat white raisins though sparse with the cashews. The side "salad" consisted of large crescents of cucumber slices with the seeds scooped out and carrot slices.

Johnnie also hit upon a couple of interesting things. The first was idli sambhar ($3.95), three steamed rice paste patties, alongside coconut chutney and a tomatoey sambhar sauce. Nice. Her malai kofta arrived, like my dish, in a tall upturned container that was removed by the waiter to reveal a tower of fragrant basmati rice. It was covered with a smooth, mildly spicy sauce that also covered tasty vegetable dumplings with potato as their central ingredient. It's subtle and very good. (Splurge $2.25 and also get a paratha, fried flat bread that is flavored with radish, spinach, or cauliflower.)

Before you go, don't neglect to check out the shelves and shelves of music cassettes and DVDs, for their action-packed cover art alone if you're Hindi is rusty. One of the Bombay Bollywood flicks will probably be playing, so you can get a sample. The one we caught, titled Don, as in Mafia boss, had the heroine singing pleasantly in various states of jeopardy and undress, from a kung fu fight and disco production number to a belly dance.

There's something for every taste at Not Just Snacks. Where else can two fill up for under $25, including tax and tip, while watching India's Britney Spears punch out gangsters?

Bill Rodriguez can be reached at billrod@reporters.net.

Issue Date: March 28 - April 4, 2002