Frontier Spice

For service and arrogance. negative stars
Food is 3 star
Quantity of appetizer… very less
Wait time was 2 hrs for biryani
Definitely din’t felt 4 and ½ star for a bay area customer

The best Indian Eatery so far in and around Pleasanton and Dublin. Lunch specials are the best.

Amazing gem in old town Pleasanton!
First, from the moment you enter the restaurant the wonderful, warm hospitality will make you warm and cozy. It’s like going to a friend’s home for dinner.
Second, the FOOD! Had Tandori chicken, sizzling on a platter with lemon and onions,
DUM PUKHT GOBI which was amazing. Don’t miss the ancient seasoned rice and vegetables with the baked crust on top. Impeccable! We’ve had the Seafood Platter and it too was spectacular. Get garlic naan bread.
Good wine selection if that interests you.
Fourth visit and our favorite place now.
Staff is knowledgeable to suggest great dish combinations so don’t be shy.
Eat with confidence, enjoy a spectacular dining experience. A+++++ on all counts.
Clean, pretty and relaxing environment.

My new favorite Indian place in town! Absolutely love everything I tried there-​Gobi Manchurian, Chili Paneer, all the chicken kababs (though my favorite is the Chuza Kabab), including the daal that comes in their lunch special. Lunch special is usually a lot of food! Very nice service and the ambience.

Fantastic fusion Indian food in a greet atmosphere. The staff was friendly and welcoming. Overall definitely worth a try!

Went with a friend on Mother’s day. Service was not bad. We ordered:
Tangri kebeab, methi chicken, achari chicken, gobhi manchurian and some breads. Everything expect gobhi manchurian was tasteless, way too americanized. I really don’t know how people like this place.
3 stars for service and gobhi.

Great service and patience to explain food ingredients to us. Food arrive promptly, utensils are clean. Get to try if you are around.
Branit is our server for the night, he is great and friendly, make us feel welcome to enjoy our dinner.

I always love coming here. My favorite thing on the menu is the fried cauliflower app! So delicious and still feels light oddly enough, despite the deep fry. The naan and papadums and sauces are so fresh and flavorful. The service is always so friendly and knowledgable, love this place!

Loved the food, service. It’s tough to find good indian food joint in east bay, but frontier spice is by far the gem. Lunch combos, dine in menu are equally good. we ordered couple of different dishes so far, Veg Biryani, Chicken tikka, Panner tikka masala lunch combo and all the dishes are tasty, balanced on spices.

Because we have a crazy 3 year old, for now we are regulars when it comes to ordering to go with this restaurant. We usually call our order in, they are friendly and quick. We’ve never had our order filled incorrectly and have never had to wait outside of the time estimate they gave us over the phone. Service and food are consistently good.

I came here after a craving for some indian food. This place markets itself as modern Indian food. I have yet to find the modern and/​or authentic Indian food at this place.
We ordered the Chicken Tikka Masala and the Palak Paneer. The dinner came with complimentary papad and chutneys. The red chutney was way too sweet and the green chutney had no element of spice or sourness to it. The whole dish was on the side of sweet.
When the tikka masala came out, the curry was bland and unflavorful. The pieces of chicken were way too large and chewy. If they had cut the chicken into smaller pieces and cooked it with the sauce instead of cooking it prior to putting it in the sauce, it would be a lot more flavorful. The chicken would’ve absorbed the flavors.
The palak was thick and soft. Typically if its thick, you should be able to discern the different leaves but this was thick and mushy. If they want this consistency, they should thin it out and purée it more. And there was a terrible palak to paneer proportion. Its like digging for gold. Gold that was obviously not marinated or treated.
Overall, they’re just mediocre versions of traditional home indian food. Coming from someone that knows their indian food, I recommend taking your business elsewhere.

I love this place for dine in. They have indian authentic food with different varieties.
Nice location and excellent customer service.
I strongly recommend to everyone to visit this place and try their Tandori Mix grill.

This place has pretty great Indian food and interesting Indian-​inspired food.
Location: this place is right in the heart of Pleasanton right after the downtown Pleasanton sign. There is a private lot for parking behind the restaurant.
Ambiance: The restaurant is pretty small, so I recommend sitting outside on a warm night.
Food: The food is good, but the big differentiator between this and other Indian restaurants is the service and the plating. They definitely serve the food in an appetizing way. There are also some unique fusion flavors and ideas that they’ve borrowed from other cuisine.
If you’re vegetarian, and want to try some of their more unique Indian inspired food I recommend: tofu & sago kababs, cajun paneer tikka, and pesto naan — all delicious.

Reading the reviews, it looks like you will either love it or hate it, quite polarizing! The perfect place to review then for a dinner date of the meat-​loving omnivore (me) with a life-​long vegetarian, who ordered. We had cauliflower manchurian (fried cauliflower with tomato sauce), achari subz (mixed vegetable with pickle spices), dal palak (lentils with spinach), roti, and ginger crème brûlée. All the apps & main dishes were ordered spicy! Everything was _​De_​lish, with the cauliflower being my least favorite. The batter was on the heavy side, which was probably needed to hold up to the very tasty sauce.
Everything tasted very fresh, with a lot of flavor and spice. And the ginger crème brûlée was one of the best crème brûlée I’ve had… and at an Indian joint (?), go figure.
North-​Indian fusion. Yummy, fresh food. Attentive staff. More upscale (so yeah, expect a 30−50% up-​charge over the casual dine, order-​at-​the-​counter prices). But worth it.
To keep up the trend, my choice is either 1 or 5 stars. So 5 stars it surely is! :)

Frontier Spice is a solid addition to the dining choices in downtown Pleasanton. No lunch buffet, they instead offer lunch specials which cost around $ 10 and come with daal, raita, rice, salad, and choice of plain or garlic naan. There aren’t too many tables, but it wasn’t crowded when I went for lunch this afternoon with a couple of work colleagues. The décor is bright and cheery, with plenty of natural light from large windows overlooking Main Street. There is a bar area with seating, so it’s probably also a good option for dinner and drinks. Parking is plentiful on the street as well in a private lot to the rear of the restaurant.
We ordered three lunch specials and shared our entrées family style. My colleagues ordered the lamb curry and chicken chilli, I vacillated between two vegetarian options before letting the waiter steer me towards the paneer jalfrezi.
The paneer jalfrezi was excellent — rich flavors, subtle spices, diced vegetables cooked just right, paneer slivers succulent to the bite. Definitely a winner.
The chicken chilli was another winner. Prepared in the Indian-​Chinese style, with a nice kick to it and the chicken breaded to perfection. Next time I am craving Indian-​Chinese food, I’m heading to Frontier Spice and ordering this entrée instead of driving down to Silicon Valley to get my fix.
The lamb curry was alright. The lamb was nicely cooked — not under or overdone, but the curry did not blow me away. In retrospect, it may have suffered in comparison with the previous two dishes.
The daal, raita, rice, salad and naan that accompanied each lunch special were okay — they each adequately served their purpose, which was to round out the meal and provide bang for buck.
All in all, Frontier Spice is a solid four star lunchtime option in downtown Pleasanton. I’m looking forward to visiting again soon and trying some of the other entrées.

Five stars plus plus plus. Such an unlikely find.
Brief summary: Indian cuisine that goes beyond satisfying, it’s a moment of exceptional happiness. Sweet little tiny restaurant in village downtown.
We came here randomly based on Unilocal reviews. Ordered a few things, and had many OMG moments. This unpretentious restaurant has opened my eyes about Indian cuisine. From the most humble dishes to the fanciest, and a few fusion dishes, everything is creative, sincere, thoughtful, tasty, and elevating.
Since then, I’ve been back 8 – 10 times, always happy. It’s to the point where I order the least interesting sounding thing on the menu, just for fun, and know I’ll be surprised. Like mixed vegetables with mustard and pickled vegetables (or something like that), and like everything else it’s just plain delicious.
Okay, so how many times have you had palak paneer? Here, the paneer (fresh cheese) was good and hearty, but the green spinach sauce was a revelation. I tasted things I had never tasted things in this dish, flavors, spices, and realized why it was something special. It was as if I’d never had a hamburger except for fast food and suddenly I bit into a french chef cooking a hamburger. Dish after dish, there was a sense of discovery, excitement, and rightness, after all of the random Indian food I’ve had in my life. The chef and partner came from Amber India in the peninsula, one of the most prestigious Indian restaurants in the area, so this makes sense, he has elevated things beyond.
The non-​humble dishes, a giant lamb shank, or the seafood dishes in various curries, are even better. Weekday lunch is a steal, kind of ridiculous.
The crowd is mostly curious white suburbanites, the locals, but increasingly I am seeing Indian-​Americans here who have heard the news.
How much do I enjoy Frontier Spice? When I am in Pleasanton, I order three or four dishes to take out back to San Francisco, and enjoy them over the next few days.

After walking around downtown Pleasanton for maybe 15 minutes, we came back to Frontier Spice for our lunch. We chose to sit outside, because it was brighter and lighter outside, but it was so HOT.
The umbrellas helped a lot, though, and it was a fun meal! Service was really friendly and consistent. The servers and manager came by to check on us and made sure we had everything we needed. They were all very kind and considerate.
Lunch is a fantastic deal, because we got a great spread for only $ 10 each! My husband had the mustard shrimp (4 good-​sized shrimp) marinated in yogurt and spices and roasted. I had the chicken tikka masala. Everything tasted good, but it was much more mildly spiced than I am used to. I’m not talking about the heat level, but the amount of actual spices in the spice mix used for each item. I love Indian food for the depth of flavor and all the different spices that I don’t get to usually eat with other cuisines, and I think the spice level here was really more constrained for the typical American palate. It was Main Street in downtown Pleasanton, so we knew what we were getting into.
That being said, the pieces of chicken in my dish were really good and hearty. Usually, I get cubes of frozen chicken in my tikka masala, but the chicken was good! The shrimp were a good size and were cooked well. The garlic naan is a must — I usually like plain naan, but the garlic naan here is really good. The dal and salad that came with our meals was also really good. Basmati rice was also included with our meal. Again, it was all a great deal for lunch!
I think Frontier Spice is a great addition to downtown Pleasanton, and we would come back for more food if in the area.

So I review mostly curry places, it’s my specialty. I have about 40+ years of trying this food category.
This Indian restaurant has been open around 4 months in Pleasanton now. The ambiance and décor is plain and ordinary. Very little was spent on updating the look inside. Totally frustrated that I was fighting a buzzing insect around my table all evening, not a good sign.
One of the benchmark standards for any restaurant in this category is how well they manage the butter chicken main item. I would describe it as disjointed meat + curry sauce, no complexity of taste or advanced cooking skill utilized. I’d hazard a guess and say that I could cook a similar dish using Trader Joe sauces and frozen chicken. Indian restaurants struggle with complexity of curries often because the chef’s have no formal training.
As with so many other Indian restaurants, they have a dizzying array of items on the menu (almost like a House of Pancake menu), none of them are particularly spectacular. Yes your desserts will be plated with squiggly lines using sauces, but any idiot watching the food channel can do that. Everyone keeps liking the lychee pana cotta dessert, and that’s fine, but it does not make this place a good Indian restaurant.
Service is rather average, provided by men for whom a few more ESL classes would be beneficial. So many options on Main Street, the nondescript service leaves you craving better.
Expect better food, service and décor, this is Pleasanton and not San Leandro. Yes it’s Indian food, (in a similar way that Taco Bell is Mexican food.) Satisfaction with a few of the items does not make this a 5 star restaurant. Incredible injustice and sadness for any person giving this place a rating any higher than 3 stars.
The other Indian place around the corner is no better.
Apologies for my slightly negative review.

I love it when I don’t have to think about anything other than what I am going to order to drink and for dinner. The service here left me wanting for nothing! I really hope they keep it up because this can definitely become a place I will frequent based on the service alone.
The food… it is exactly what I would expect to find in a prime/​visible location on Main St. in D-​Town P-​Town. It is really good with great presentation but it is not as complex and flavorful when compared to other places. Which is ok because it was still really good! In that respect it is a perfect addition. *winks*
We ordered the Chicken Dum Biriyani, Chicken Tikka Masala, and Lychee Panna Cotta. The Chicken Dum Biriyani comes with bread blanket on top to keep all the chicken, rices, and spices yum yums warm! The server will cut an opening on the top so you can get at it! That was the better dish compared to the Chicken Tikka Masala which was good. The Lychee Panna Cotta was refreshing even though it was a custard because of the Lychee and raspberries. It also had Saffron in it!
If you want good food, great service, and lovely ambiance with your Indian Food then this spot is for you.

I have to agree with Kate S. The food here was actually somewhat bland. Since the service was outstanding and the cleanliness was top notch as others have stated, I will be back for one more round and WILL REQUEST the food to be made a little more authentic style with some spice and heat. Pleasanton is diversifying so the owners do not have to be quite so cautious:)
This place should be a winner. One other point though… no buffet at lunch which may be a good thing since I usually cannot function for a couple hours due to over eating after powering down an Indian buffet.