Saffron Indian Cuisine: Lunch buffet in Burnaby
I say I like Indian food but all I ever order is butter chicken and naan… 😅
Today’s restaurant review features Saffron Indian Cuisine, an Indian restaurant located between 2 Big Way Hot Pot locations in Burnaby. We were invited to check out their special lunch buffet, priced at $24 on weekdays and $26 on weekends.
Saffron Indian Cuisine
4300 Kingsway #5, Burnaby, BC V5H 1Z8, Canada
The vibe
The inside of Saffron Indian Cuisine was bigger than I thought. They have a lot of seating and can seat large tables of 6+. Tables are pretty wide and chairs are black and kind of plush.
On the left side, the wall is decorated with a lot of different photographs, arts/paintings and wall decor. On the other wall, the lunch buffet trays are out and there’s ample natural light coming in from the restaurant storefront windows.
There were a lot of food available for the lunch buffet 😳. First, there is a dessert section with 3 trays of Indian desserts. Next, there is a build-your-own salad bar, along with all the different sauces.
The first 2 trays were appetizers – jalapeno paneer poppers and pakora, along with those airy fried balls you put the oil sauce in.
Next, they have a tray of tandoori chicken, which is a staple in their lunch buffet. After that, there are 2 different trays of rice (plain + with peas).
Entering into the curry zone, there are a lot of choices! First are the 2 vegetarian options – a spinach and paneer one and one with lentils. After that, we have 2 more vegetarian dishes – spicy chilli mushroom and eggplant and potatoes.
Moving onto meat options, there is a chicken curry and a rotational beef or lamb curry. Sometimes they have fish curry, but mostly it is beef or lamb. And lastly, there is a big tray of butter chicken.
Food and drinks review
Disclaimer: As part of an Instagram collab, we got to try the lunch buffet and drinks in this post for free.
Mango lemonade ($5) + Mango lassi ($8)
For drinks, we chose a mango lemonade and mango lassi.
The mango lemonade was very fruity and had a thicker texture than I expected.
The mango lassi was one of the prettiest ones I’ve seen 😍! It was also huge – definitely enough to share between 2 people. It had a strong yogurt flavour and was very filling for a beverage.
Naan (complimentary)
I actually prefer to eat my curry with naan instead of rice so I was happy to see that naan is complimentary with the lunch buffet, because I didn’t see any naan in any of the trays. They provided a basket of regular naan and garlic naan.
Both naan were tasty – not soggy and had a nice crispy edge texture and easy to rip apart to eat 👍. Out of the two, I did like the garlic naan more (as usual).
Lunch buffet ($24-26)
This is pretty much all the food I ate for lunch. I wanted to try a little bit of everything and go back to eat the items I liked. In order of what I liked the most:
- Butter chicken + garlic naan…. as expected, still my #1 😂
- Spinach curry – this surprised me 😲! It was light and I knew it was healthy too
- Pakora – this was cauliflower pakora and I like both cauliflower and anything deep fried
- Beef curry
- Spicy chilli mushroom
- Eggplant and potatoes
Things I didn’t like as much:
- Tandoori chicken – I found it dry
- Lentil curry – just not a fan of lentils
- Chicken curry – I think the butter chicken is much better
- Salad – lol 💀
For desserts, they had a mango one, rice pudding, and the classic Gulab Jamun. Out of these 3, I only liked the rice pudding because it was “not too sweet”. The mango I found it to taste a little “fake” with the mango sauce – it just tasted like candy. And the gulab jamun is always too sweet for me.
Chai tea ($4)
To end our meal, our server recommended a cup of Masala Chai. This is their in house made spiced chai tea. We added our own amount of sugar and it had a little kick of ginger and spice. Overall, a nice way to end our meal.
Final thoughts
Loewe’s rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
We had an enjoyable lunch at Saffron Indian Cuisine. For the price you pay ($24 weekdays and $26 weekends), I think this is a great price. When we order Indian food for takeout, one butter chicken can already be $20 but for a similar price, you get access to try so many more foods.
All the curries are cooked to be mild, so this is a great spot to come if you are a beginner to Indian cuisine or you want to expand your palette to more than just butter chicken.
Service was excellent and they did a great job explaining to me all the different curries and dishes.
I wish the buffet was available for dinner! Even at a higher price, I think I could eat a lot more if it was dinner vs. lunch. If you are not interested in the buffet, you can order al le carte but mostly everyone I saw ended up going with the lunch buffet because it’s more value.
Sincerely, Loewe