Surabaya Gourmet: The Golden Saffron

Chicken Tandoor Mix

Coming from a European country where most people eat bread every day, I (Julia) have some kind of a bread addiction. Sometimes it can get really bad and I crave bread so much that the sweet bread and toast bread which you can find in Surabaya are not enough to satisfy me. Then, strangely enough, I have to eat Indian Nan bread to fix my bread cravings :D . So, when this was happening last week, Carlo and I went to The Golden Saffron to enjoy some Indian food and bread. The Golden Saffron is located in Lenmarc Mall and one of the very few Indian restaurants in Surabaya (Sitara is another one). We haven’t been to India yet, so we cannot judge the authenticity of the food. But I used to eat a lot of Indian food when I was living in Singapore, so we have a rough idea about it.

You already get a feeling of India when you enter the restaurant. There is a small elephant shrine that welcomes you as you enter. The interior design is pretentious, with a lot of kitsch and a lot of purple colour and a screen showing Indian TV, so you feel a bit like being in Bollywood. Tables are big and comfortable but our table was not clean. There were stains on the table cloth! This little fact changed our expectations from neutral to negative and we were curious how the food would be.

We had Panner Kadai (vegetarian curry with Indian cheese), a plate of mixed chicken tandoor and the mix bread basket which contained three different kinds of nan bread: whole wheat, butter and one more that we could not identify. The bread was delicious as expected and I could finally satisfy my bread craving (at least for some time :D ). It was very fresh and it just came out of the oven! The plate of mixed chicken tandoor was average, it was a small portion for the price we payed. The waitress told us when we had already finished eating that tandoor meat is actually eaten with (biryani) rice and not with bread. This was maybe one reason why it didn’t taste that good. Our favourite dish was the panner kadai, it is very delicious when you eat it together with naan bread! For drinks, we had Chai Masala tea besides the ordinary ice lemon tea and hot chocolate. The chai masala tea was very nice!

Service was good but there were not many guests. Our food took a bit long but this is okay because you can see (part of?) the kitchen and watch them make your food :-) .