Inde Spice, the halal Indian restaurant at 526 Commack Road in Deer Park, wants to serve wine and beer with its curries. Sethi Foods Inc., the company behind the restaurant, set the plan in motion in mid-August, the first step toward a drinks list at the Commack Road dining room.

It would be a first for the restaurant. The dining room has operated dry since the day it opened, even as the corporation behind it has been in business since May 2017. Nearly a decade in, the owners have decided the menu has earned a glass of something cold beside it.

What the drinks list would cover

The plan covers wine, beer and cider served at the table, but not spirits, so this is a glass-of-wine-with-dinner upgrade rather than a cocktail bar in the making. For a menu built on tandoori platters, dum biryani and slow-simmered curries, that is the natural fit: a cold lager against the heat of a vindaloo, or a crisp white with the tikka masala.

Standing up drinks service takes most Long Island restaurants a few months from decision to first pour, which would put the debut at Inde Spice around the holidays if everything goes smoothly.

The restaurant behind the plan

Inde Spice has become one of the anchors of Deer Park's food scene along the busy Commack Road corridor, serving a menu that runs from North Indian tandoori and biryani through South Indian dishes and into the Indo-Chinese lane of dishes like Gobi Manchurian. Everything is halal, and the vegetarian and vegan side of the menu is deep enough that plant-based diners treat the place as a destination rather than a compromise. In a corridor crowded with fast food and franchise signage, it is the rare kitchen people cross town lines for.

The restaurant has leaned into an all-you-can-eat format that has built it a following well beyond Deer Park, with diners sampling their way across the menu rather than committing to a single entree. It runs lunch and dinner service and a catering operation that sends party trays across Long Island, from graduation parties to office lunches.

What it means for dinner

For now, nothing changes: the first pour is still months away, and the kitchen keeps doing what it does. When the drinks arrive, Deer Park gets something it has not had at this address before, a proper wine and beer list alongside one of western Suffolk's most distinctive Indian menus. A move like this is also usually a signal of confidence, the kind of investment a restaurant makes when the dining room is full enough to justify the cost and the wait.

Inde Spice joins a steady stream of Long Island restaurants upgrading their service this summer, from pizzerias adding wine to their tables to seafood counters pouring their first glasses. The pattern underneath them all is the same: established local kitchens deciding the next step is a glass of something cold next to the food that built their reputation.