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Review: Saffron Indian Cuisine

Gene, Christina, Mabel, and I went to Saffron restaurant to celebrate our last day of work together before some of us started our Christmas holidays. Saffron is an Indian restaurant located on Kingsway near Metrotown. For lunch, they offer a small but tasty buffet for $10.95. I had only ordered take-out from here so I was interested to see what was offered at the lunch buffet.

I must have forgotten to turn on my macro mode on my camera that day as some of my pictures are a bit blurry but I think you will get the general idea of what the food looked like.

The chicken biryani was quite tasty and packed with a lot of veggies.

Butter chicken is always one of the most popular dishes here. The chunks of chicken are quite big and the sauce is great to dip your naan bread in.

I don’t remember what this was called but the potatoes were a bit undercooked. The extra crunch of the potatoes did make this dish interesting though.

My favourite dish at Saffron is the Tandoori chicken. The chicken is always juicy and full of great flavour.

I don’t remember what this dish was called either but Christina recommended it to me. It is full of peas and lentils and went very well with naan because of its saucy consistency.

The fried dough was surprisingly light and was also good for dipping in the saucy dishes like the butter chicken and the lentil dish above. It is slightly sweet and very crunchy.

Finally, we were on to dessert. I tried a mango pudding that also had other types of fruit mixed in. It was very creamy and had a strong mango taste. I am not a big fan of creamy puddings though so this did not appeal to me very much.

I also had some rice pudding. I’m not sure what this is called but I have tried it in other Indian restaurants. It is slightly sweet and has a soupy texture with well-boiled rice. I found it lighter than the mango pudding and enjoyed the taste of this more.

Mabel is a big fan of the sweet cake balls offered at Indian restaurants. Again, I am not sure what this is called. It is the sweetest of the three desserts in this review so if you enjoy sweet things, this may be a dessert for you.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but the food at Saffron is very rich and will sit in your stomach long after you have stopped eating. Because everything was so tasty and I wanted to try a little of everything, I overate quite a bit. The important thing to remember at buffets like this is to know when it is time to stop eating! At $10.95 per person for the lunch buffet, this is a good deal, especially when considering the large selection of items to choose from.

Details:
4300 Kingsway, Burnaby
Tel: 604-436-5000

Summary:
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Service:
Price: $$

Posted in Indian, Reviews | 5 Comments »

Review: Chili Pepper House

A bunch of us went to the Chili Pepper House at 3003 Kingsway in Vancouver for Gene’s birthday. This is one of a few Chinese-Indian restaurants in the area…another notable one is the Green Lettuce just down the street on Kingsway. The owners of this restaurant are Chinese and grew up in India, which means that they have an interesting take on the food here. Because there were six of us, we decided to order a bunch of dishes to share. Gene comes here pretty often so he did all the ordering for us. For almost any dish, you can choose between 1-3 “chili peppers”, meaning mild, medium, or hot. We picked medium spicyness for everything.

First came the hot and sour soup. The soup was thick and spicy. It was a bit more sour than the Chinese-style hot and sour soup I was more accustomed to.

Next came some fried green beans. The beans were fresh and crunchy with a hint of spicyness. Just the way I like them.

The fried chicken noodles were next. Think of them as your typical soy sauce chicken fried noodles but with a kick of spicyness. The noodles had a nice bounce to them and were very tasty.

The haaji prawns are always a favourite and this time, it was no exception. If you like spicyness, garlic, and prawns, this is the dish to get. Even though we asked for medium spicyness, this seemed way spicier.

Next came another fan favourite, the Manchurian veggie balls. The best way to describe them is to imagine balls of chopped veggies (carrots, cabbage, mushrooms, etc) deep fried and then drenched in spicy Manchurian sauce. There is a lot of sauce with this dish though so it is best eaten with some rice.

And for our last dish, we had the Manchurian chicken. This was cubes of chicken deep fried and then drizzled in the same Manchurian sauce as the veggie balls.

It was a great meal and we were all sniffling at the end due to the spiciness of all the dishes. I normally find that they are heavy on the sauce here so if you are not into that, you may want to get some dishes that are “dry”. Another alternative is to make sure you have a healthy serving of rice to soak up all the sauce. This place is quite popular and by the time it was 12:30pm, the restaurant was packed.

Details:
1-3003 Kingsway, Vancouver
Tel: 604-431-8633

Summary:
Food:
Service:
Price: $$

Posted in Indian, Asian, Chinese, Reviews | 13 Comments »