Last fall, the duo opened a restaurant of their own, emphasizing Southern cuisine paired with live music played several evenings a week. The entertainment is great, but the food is outstanding, offering a creative mix of soul-food favorites along with a few gussier items to tempt the flashier nightclub crowd. There's just one failing to this restaurant, really, but, unfortunately, it's a big one. The location is miserable. Seventh Street and Southern is pure barrio, and, in fact, Spiced With Jazz looks like a condemned building from the outside.
Nighttime excursions can be scary, tiptoeing through an unlit parking lot.
Venture inside, though, and worries melt away. The menu is more ambitious than its surroundings suggest, too. A shrimp appetizer is sweet, and special for its stuffing of havarti and basil, wrapping of bacon and hickory-wood grilling. Meals begin with a basket of hot, chewy white bread, but hold out for the corn bread that comes with the entrees. This is spectacular stuff, cut in pie wedges and gorgeously fluffy, moist and buttery.