The Saffron House
96 Canterbury Road
Blackburn South
www.thesaffronhouse.com.au
Mr B is a hard person to please with Indian food, being convinced that Banjarra’s Indian Cafe in Glenferrie Road is the best Indian of all time and no others could compare. However, he has acquiesced to us trying out all the Indian around our new house, and thus we find ourselves first off at The Saffron House in Blacky South.
Pappadums to start
And dare I say it, but we might have a contender to rival the cafe! The Saffron House was pretty quiet on the Friday night we visited, with just a few tables dining, but my goodness do they do a roaring takeaway trade – a sign of local favour. Did I mention delivery is free too?
Service was lovely – friendly but not intrusive. The interior of the place is very classy albeit with a TV on the wall playing Bollywood movies – but why not after all? As fellow blogger Kenny from Consider The Sauce points out in his reviews of western suburbs establishments, that is certainly no reason to write off a place.
We ordered the lamb kashmiri ($15.50) which had meltingly tender and smallish chunks of lamb in a delicious sauce, which included ginger and fennel, although you can’t really isolate these individual flavours from the saucy whole.
Lamb Kashmiri – with ginger, garlic and fennel
Mr B’s pick was the chicken jalfrezi (also $15.50), representing a radical departure from his normal kadhai paneer order – or is it? Not really – jalfrezi has capsicum, so there are definitely some crossover flavours going on here. Regardless the jalfrezi sauce was great – rich and tomatoey but with an almost smoky flavour going on from the capsicums. And jalfrezi’s not really my favourite sauce, so these are words of high praise indeed.
Chicken Jalfrezi – capsicum and tomato
We also skipped the rice on this trip and just went with my favourite order of “maximum naan”, which in practice turned out to be way too much (see Fig 1.4 below). We got some roti to mix it up a little, some garlic naan and (not pictured) aloo paratha, which, coupled with the mango lassi that we kind-of-drank-for-dessert, saw us rolling out into the night like… like… two Zorb balls down a NZ mountainside.
Roti (wholemeal), Naan (garlic), Mango lassi (just at the top there)
To wash it all down? Why, a Kingfisher each of course.
Wash it all down with a Kingfisher of course.
I really, really liked our meal here. I plan to come back and eat our way through the entire menu – I don’t know if I need to try out any more Indian places in Blackburn and surrounds – my work is done!
Nice interior and entertainment provided by Bollywood movies
Fresh Bread 