Safran, Paris

Safran

Jul 12, 2011

    

Our initial plan had been to go to L'Ambiance de l'Inde, which we'd seen just around the corner from the hotel, but after checking out reviews of the place, and not finding a single one recommending the place, we widened our search and came up with a place called Safran, about 10 minutes walk from the hotel and which got rave reviews.

The hotel was located in the St Michel neighbourhood, among a hub of restaurants and tourist shops.

The restaurant was made up of several rooms and we were seated upstairs.

The menu had all the usual dishes on it. We chose lamb seekh kebab and onion beignet to start, chicken makhanwani and shrimp madras as mains, pulau rice and plain naan. To drink we had a bottle of rose de provence.

Our appetisers arrived unsizzling on a sizzle plate, and we got the impression that they had been waiting around for a while before being brought to the table. The kebab was good but the onion beignet was like an american onion ring, which was a bit disappointing. Among the sauces served with the appetisers was lime pickle, which I haven't had in years and which was fabulously tart here. Oddly they brought the naan out with the appetiser not the main, so by the time we really wanted to eat it, it was cold.

The main courses were only OK and warm rather than hot. The chicken makhwani was very creamy and boring and the madras leant more to the cream than tomato side, and if there truly were 24 spices in the dish, (as the menu said), I certainly couldn't taste them. The madras wasn't spicy in the least.

The waiter said they had mango and that it was ripe, so we ordered it for dessert. It was nowhere near as ripe as the one "specially flown in from new delhi" that we had in Nice.

This meal verged on OK, but overall was pretty disappointing considering thenpositive reviews we had read.