POST Houston Food Hall Adds a New Indian Street Food Hotspot With Topnotch Chef Power — Spice Zest Brings the Heat

The POST Houston, the expansive 53,000-square-foot mixed-use complex that took up residency inside (and outside) of the long abandoned regional hub of the USPS headquarters in downtown Houston (better known as the Barbara Jordan Post Office) has added Spice Zest, an Indian street food restaurant, to its bustling food hall.

The fast-casual Spice Zest was created by chefs and co-owners Sunil and Anupama Srivastava, who also own the upscale progressive Indian restaurant named Verandah Restaurant on Kirby Drive.

The duo each have quite an impressive curriculum vitae, with both achieving critical acclaim in the restaurants they’ve worked at around the globe and started right here in Houston too. Born in India, Sunil and Anupama Srivastava are graduates of the Institute of Hotel Management. He is from the campus in Bangalore, and she is from the campus in Chennai.

Over the years, Sunil had the privilege of cooking for the Duke of Edinburg and Queen Elizabeth during their historic visit to India in 1997, then President Bill Clinton, Prime Minister Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, and Indian Prime Ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh. Microsoft founder Bill Gates has dined on Sunil’s creative food, as has the Ambassador of Tunisia to India, Sabeer Bhatia (the founder of Hotmail) and Vinod Dham (Intel, the founder of Pentium Chip). He also planned and hosted a cooking show for Miss India 2002.

Apropos of its bustling casual setting, the Srivastava’s latest restaurant endeavor, Spice Zest offers flavor-packed street food like you’d encounter in street stalls dotted in cities all throughout India. Unique to each region in which it is made, the street fare at Spice Zest allows diners to vicariously travel the continent. Each meal offers a wide selection of bite-sized, as well as full-sized menu items, soups, sides and desserts hailing from cities like Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi and Chennai from sweet to savory and everything in between.

For example, starters include those iconic crispy samosas vegetarian in this case — filled with potatoes and peas ($7), a classic warm naan bread ($4) often used to scoop up stew-like dishes from chicken tikka masala (roasted chicken finished in a tomato cream sauce $18) and Konkan shrimp curry (garlic infused shrimp in a tamarind coconut curry $20). There are wraps like the Kathi roll, Spice Zest’s answer to the burrito filled with paneer, egg, or chicken tikka.

In addition, many of the dishes are vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free and entrees each include basmati rice, bean kachumber salad, steamed corn and a papad (Indian cracker) crumble. Beverages include a warming masala chai ($3), a chilly mango lassi made with a mango whipped yogurt base ($5), and a turmeric lemon elixir with a hint of ginger and mint ($5).

Available for continuous service seven days a week, Spice Zest is located inside POST Houston at 401 Franklin with doors open from 11 am to 9 pm Sundays through Thursdays and 11 am to 10 pm Fridays and Saturdays.