This blog and website started life as my journalism portfolio, and if you look to the side menu, that stuff is still there. It morphed into some place to chronicle my travel writings, my adventures, and my restaurant “reviews,” and then headed down the road of my disability experiences. I guess, in essence, this blog can serve anything.

One of the best perks of social media is exposure to restaurants and attractions you’ve never heard of– with many of them in your own backyard.

Instagram decided I needed to know about Spice Crust Pizzeria, located at 2910 Easton Avenue in Bethlehem, Pa. It’s a pizzeria– and it does indeed serve standard pizza, but it’s specialty is traditional Indian flavors served on pizza. Now, Eva and I love two things: pizza and well-done Indian cuisine. Other members of our household are less adventurous so we left them home. Now that we know they serve boring pizza, too, we can bring them next time.

If you know Easton Avenue, it’s in the plaza behind the Dairy Queen– the one Eva and I call “creepy plaza,” because the area is a little run down and at night can look extra dilapidated.

In the midst of my recent health journey, and refining my eating patterns, I don’t eat out much. And working part-time in a fast food restaurant, I do typically make good choices like kale salads and yogurt and fruit cups but when I’m stressed I eat the ginormous fried chicken sandwich and gain two pounds the next morning.

So if I’m going to make a choice to eat out, I want it to be special and “worth it.” And I want options that aren’t fancy sit-down ordeals, but conducive to a relaxing evening of doing nothing. For many of us, pizza is a go-to. And Dominos, with its inexpensive delivery and special deals can be cheap and satisfying, but so bad for your body. Chinese and Indian are other great go-tos, and at least offer more opportunities for vegetables, but Eva and I see those menus and order enough food for a family of ten.

This is a great compromise– the ease of pizza, the lazy shove it in your face experience, but the culinary adventure of spices outside your everyday repertoire. (And I made an Indian-spiced lentil stew on Sunday that I have eaten for the last three days, but this was still better, and more delightful, and welcome.)

In the gallery below, you will see two medium pizzas. The one on the left, where you can see a pizza box, is the veggie paneer pizza. The one on the right is the chicken curry halal pizza. They are very beautiful, colorful pizzas full of texture.

We arrived and we ordered the halal chicken curry pizza. Eva grabbed a couple of their in-house-bottled mango lassis and I picked a lychee drink, which was very floral yet not heavy. It offered a great reprieve from the spiciness of the pizza.

We later learned that they make their own yogurt for the lassi, and Eva brought home three more for her breakfast. The lassi has the perfect blend of sweet from the mango, and tang from the yogurt, but had a delicateness to it that I would attribute to their homemade yogurt. Eva has already texted her father about stopping on his way home from visiting his mother to get her more.

We also ordered the fried broccoli cheese bites. Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have. I didn’t need more food and I certainly didn’t need fried food. If I hadn’t ordered those, the scale might have been kinder to me today.

But it is nice to do something out of the ordinary.

The pizza arrived and it was really amazing. They didn’t skimp on toppings. Every mouthful was full of flavor and exploding on the tongue.

That’s why we ordered the second pizza to take home. It’s waiting for us in the fridge.

Their web site reads: “Diverse Tastes, Unforgettable Flavors, Offering a Unique Dining Experience That Blends the Rich Flavors of Indian and Italian Cuisine.” Visit their web site here.