Saffron Indian Cuisine

FOOD

Saffron’s weekend lunch buffet brings together biryanis, regional curries, tandoori specialties, vegetarian dishes, and Indian desserts. The selection changes, with butter chicken, mutter paneer, and bone-in tandoori chicken among dishes that have appeared on the buffet. Chicken biryani and carrot halwa have also been part of its spreads. The particular lunch takes its shape from that day’s selection. This is an all-you-can-eat lunch on Saturday and Sunday, with naan also brought to the table.

Butter chicken has a practical and rather affectionate relationship with naan. There is the chicken in its butter-based sauce, and then there is the last bit of sauce on the plate. A little bread saves that from becoming unfinished business. The dish is a familiar Indian curry, at home in a spread that also reaches toward tandoori cooking and several vegetarian preparations.

Mutter paneer gives the curry spread its familiar pairing of peas and paneer, the Indian cheese. It is an appealing name to find among the vegetarian dishes: cheese has been invited to lunch, and has wisely brought company. Saffron includes a wider changing vegetarian selection, too, alongside its meat and tandoori dishes. The paneer-and-peas curry is one of the dishes that has appeared in that spread.

Bone-in tandoori chicken is another of the chicken dishes that often is served on the buffet. Tandoori cooking is part of Saffron’s wider North Indian repertoire, alongside Goan and Chettinad influences elsewhere on the restaurant’s menu. That regional reach gives the weekend buffet its context, with tandoori food and changing regional curries among the core spread. This is a lunch from an Indian restaurant with more than a single regional tradition behind it.

Naan comes to the table while lunch continues at the buffet. Plain, butter, and garlic naan appear among the buffet-associated bread choices, along with tandoori roti. Butter and garlic give the naan selection different finishes, while plain naan and roti keep another bread choice in view. That little delivery of bread is one of Saffron’s particularly appealing details: a buffet lunch with something still brought to the table while the curries are attracting attention.

Chicken biryani has appeared among the buffet’s rice dishes. The chicken-and-rice dish joins a wider biryani selection, another part of the weekend spread alongside the regional curries and tandoori food.

Indian desserts complete the spread. Carrot halwa, the carrot-based sweet, has been one of the buffet’s desserts, giving lunch an ending with a distinctly Indian identity. Carrots in dessert: a rather agreeable rebuttal to the idea that vegetables must always behave themselves. The sweets change along with the other dishes, but dessert remains part of this weekend meal of curries, tandoori food, rice, and naan. From paneer and peas in a curry to carrots in a sweet, the buffet has some rather engaging ways with vegetables. That is a particular pleasure of this Indian spread, alongside the chicken dishes and bread.