Last Updated on January 12, 2024, 9:56 AM | Published: January 12, 2024
There is a difference between spice and heat.
Spice comes from, you guessed it, spices. Heat comes from chilies, which can be processed into spices. But they are not interchangeable.
That said, if you like your food spicy-hot and spice-spicy, Mohammad Qazi and Tanya Sheikh would very much like to meet you. Mo and Tanya are the owners of Sizzle N Spice Kebab Grill in northwest Oklahoma City, home to some of the best home style Pakistani cuisine to be found in these parts.
Sheikh is the mastermind in the kitchen, creating a wide variety of classic dishes and new renditions that have caught on with locals.
Her almond milk chicken, for instance, is a take on a Pakistani-influenced chicken alfredo. There’s no chance diners would confuse one with the other, but the translation works—almond milk chicken has that sweetness and creaminess you’d expect from chicken alfredo, but the spice blend she uses to season it keeps it light and lively. The fact it’s served over rice instead of pasta is also a pretty dead giveaway.
I wish I could say almond milk chicken is waiting for you right now, but that dish is a buffet special, and with the encyclopedic Pakistani cookbook that is her brain, the lineup is always changing.
The daily lunch buffet (Tuesday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-2 p.m.) is small, but mighty, and she takes great pains to ensure that all guests will find something to enjoy by creating vegetarian and vegan curries in both mild and hot varieties, as well as plenty of meaty entrees.
In fact, Sheikh said that while Indian food (with which Pakistani cuisine is often compared) has a greater focus on meatless dishes, the food she grew up with and serves today are often built around the meat. Spice-loving carnivores take note.
With that in mind, the restaurant has recently begun hosting more buffets with more attention paid to the kebab side of the business. I attended a Kebab Night Buffet that had a limited number of curries but a far greater amount of spiced and grilled meats, including the crown jewel of the restaurant, the Beef Chapli Kebab.
Think about a really tasty rustic hamburger and you’ll be halfway to a beef chapli kebab. It’s made with ground beef, but mixed with a number of herbs and spices and cooked both on a grill and in a fryer. The result is a little crispy, a little tender, a little spicy, and a whole lot of rich, beefy umami.
The Grand Buffet on Saturdays runs from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. and includes a wider selection of curries, as well as appetizers, kebabs, desserts, and the always important naan bread.
But Sheikh is most excited about what I’m calling the Oklahoma de Pakistan night. She’s planning a Sunday Night Live Grill event that she likens to a Pakistani Texas de Brazil meal with freshly grilled beef and chicken kebabs of every variety circulating to ensure everyone experiences a meat coma.
That said, not everyone is a buffet kind of person, and for those of us who love leftovers, going on a non-buffet night ensures you’ll have plenty to take home for midnight snacks or next-day lunches.
One dish I must recommend is Chicken Jal-Fraizi. (See the feature photo.) This is a rustic-style curry with big pieces of tender chicken and roasted peppers and onions in a tomato-cream curry. It’s sweet and savory and a great introduction to Pakistani cuisine for those who are unsure where to start. Chicken Tikka Masala is another option, especially if you’d like to contrast and compare with how it’s served in Indian restaurants.
Leaning a bit more into Asian flavors is the Chicken Karahi. It’s a stir-fry of tomatoes, garlic, and ginger with big, meaty chunks of chicken. As some of the sauce that enrobes the meat and vegetables makes its way down into the rice, the dish gets more and more enticing.
Keeping with the theme of meatiness is the Beef Keema Stir-fry. For whatever reason, ground meat curries are not the norm in Oklahoma, but this one is irresistible. All the surface area of the meat soaks up the spices and the ginger and creates a kind of thick gravy that clings to the rice. The heat level can be changed to the customer’s liking, so I tend to go lower, as the heat will intensify overnight in the fridge for the Beef Keema Stir-fry omelets I make the morning after.
First-time visitors should be prepared to meet Mo, who is very welcoming and happy to walk diners through the menu to help them find a dish they’ll love. Though that part of the job is kind of easy when you take into account that everything on the menu is worth trying.
- Sizzle N Spice Kebab Grill
- 15001 North May Avenue, Suite H in Oklahoma City
- (405) 849-5179
- sizzlenspice.com
- Tues-Sat 11 a.m.-9 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m.-8:30 p.m.
Long-time food enjoyer Greg Elwell writes about food, restaurants, and trends. He has his own blog "I Ate Oklahoma" and has written for The Oklahoman, The Oklahoma Gazette, and others.
