MYRTLE BEACH SC (WBTW) — A lot of ingredients can lead to a lot of dishes, and at Bombay at the Beach, they have both. And this Indian restaurant is making things as mild or as wild as you want.

“I’d describe Indian food as basically anything you want it to be,” owner Aquib Ahmed said.

At Bombay at the Beach, the No. 1 one ingredient is all the ingredients.

“It’s a varied cuisine,” Ahmed said. “There’s so many different regions of India. There’s so many different flavor profiles.”

Ahmed and his family own Bombay at the Beach. He also runs it.

“I’ve always loved food growing up. Cooking, eating,” Ahmed said. “It was just kind of a natural thing to kind of run this place.”

He says too many people think all Indian food is spicy. While spice is nice, there’s more to it than heat.

“We specialize in, it’s really a little bit more northern,” he said. “So my family’s south Indian. So we do make south Indian food, but something that’s more palatable to a Western audience is usually more cream-based, more milder flavors. We get a lot of Indian clientele, so we make our food spicy, but it’s food that will be just as good without any heat in it.”

Lucky for Ahmed, he has a quick commute to work.

“We live upstairs,” Ahmed said. “So it’s easy to work when you’re here all the time. They say home is where the heart is, and, whenever I’m here I’m home.”

When you live on-site, and your business is food, you don’t get to leave too often. Running a restaurant, and one that’s a little different, is far from easy.

“So it’s not easy to do a restaurant,” Ahmed said. “And it’s that much harder to do an Indian restaurant here in Myrtle Beach, I’ll be honest with you. A lot of people here like their seafood, their barbecues, things like that, but one thing we stand behind is the quality of our food.”

So instead of associating Indian food with heat, you might want to consider quality and freshness.

“Freshness is always important,” Ahmed said. “Especially as a restaurant, and also as, in the area, we’d be considered an exotic restaurant.”

Something else, if you don’t feel like using a fork and knife, don’t worry, Indian food is traditionally eaten with your hands. But yes, they do have silverware.

Bombay at the Beach is in the same spot it’s always been since 1981, on North Kings Highway in downtown Myrtle Beach.