Zaffran opened its doors to Bangalore last November. Bangalore’s most desirable entrepreneur extended his business powess after the much hyped City Bar. There are very few ‘much hyped’ restaurants in the city today that I have not visited around the time they’ve opened. This fortunately or unfortunately is one of them. So finally, one of our lunch outings took us to this St Marks Road restaurant on a quiet tuesday afternoon.
A very nice, bright and a pleasant yellow tone greets you along with silk curtains fluttering in the wind from the open side of the restaurant. There is also an option of lounge seating, which looked very cosy and could probably a perfect way of spending a sunday afternoon over tall summer coolers. The rest of the decor to me seemed like I had seen it somewhere else before (especially the motifs on the walls), is fairly dominated by yellow in the form of table cloths being countered by black dinner napkins, golden cruet sets and stainless steel cutlery.
I hadn’t visited an Indian restaurant in a long time now. The last once that I visited set very high standards which super impressed me. A rare sight in restaurants today. So my expectations were certainly quite high.
The menu design was typical to many Indian restaurants (wonder why), The beverage menu had most of the usual suspects in the vodkas, gins, whiskys (of its likes) and beers. The wine list too was fairly large and priced pretty standard. What was interesting to note was a few wines each from Portugal and Austria. Not such a common site on wine lists in the city today. Most wines are priced from Rs. 3000 upwards.
The food menu was fairly large with lots of choices for all including vegetarians. Upon arrival a chance conversation with the Chef who also helped us uncomplicating the order process set the order of the evening.
Our lunch started off with a sinfully thick Zaffran Lassi. As the name suggest, saffron and pistachio were dominating flavours. A fairly rich beverage to start the meal, so I decided to finish it after the lunch in place of the dessert.
A unique Roomali roti masala papad was brought to the table next. This was a large roomali roti with chopped onions and tomato masala (a la masala papad), was supposed to be a crisp appetizer. Though the idea seemed interesting, the execution was probably timed a bit wrong.. and the a bit too messy. By the time we got to breaking a piece each, the masala was all over the table and we ended up eating a soggy roomali roti. Im pretty sure, if the roomali would have been crisp as it was meant to be, all of us would have certainly enjoyed it.
The hot appetizers were however completely different from its preceding roomali papad. The chef had chosen to send us Zaffran Murgh Tikka, Murg Banjara Kebab and Ghost Tikka. All priced between Rs. 200 and Rs. 240 were presented well and were value for money. All three appetizers were succulent, seasoned and cooked well. Not a bad start to the meal after all, BUT i certainly expected something better and expected something more.
For Main Course, the chef insisted we have the butter chicken and since we were a group of 8 the Raan Biryani. The Buttter chicken I felt was very standard, completely rich almost ready to rush you to Wokhart after the meal. A standard Indian bread basket accompanied the creamy curry. Hot, buttered and again, pretty standard. Giving the whole experience another change, I hoped that the Raan biryani would be the most amazing biryani I had ever eaten. The rice was delicately flavoured and cooked to perfection, but the meat seemed wanting. Though tender, it had reminsance of the butter chicken gravy (or so it seemed to me).
By this time, I needed a crane to lift me out of the restaurant. But the question still remained to be answered.
- Was the restaurant nice - yes
- Was the food good - yes, but quite standard.
- Was the service efficient - yes for a lazy afternoon, we were give a lot of attention,
- Was the pricing/ portions good - yes
If i had to put numbers to rate my experience on a scale of 1-10
Food - 8
Beverage - 8
Service - 8
VFM (Value for money) - 8
OE (Over all experience) - 7
Overall, I still feel Zaffran is a very decent restaurant with very standard Indian cusinie in a pleasant setting. But I could get this taste, quality and ambiance anywhere in town.
No comments:
Post a Comment