Review: Saffron Indian Cuisine in Tampa serves affordable luxury
20.05.12
TAMPA
The murals on the wall feature tidy little piles of bright orange threads. They are the restaurant's namesake spice, saffron, a pound of which requires the manual extraction of filament-like stigmas from the center of 75,000 crocuses. A football field of flowers is needed to get a pound of this earthy, hay-like spice. No surprise that it's costly and rare, but as a namesake, it's not a perfect fit.
Saffron Indian Cuisine is certainly not costly, and good Indian food in New Tampa is increasingly common given the growing Indian population. Still, Sunita Chheda's small, strip-mall restaurant, opened in 2008 across from the New Tampa Library, is a find.
In the kitchen, Chheda is bold, unafraid of serious spiciness. But her heat is not a straightforward hurts-so-good kind of thing. It's nuanced, the flavorful food relying on a cumulative effect to get you sniffling. She presides over an ambitious menu, her skills equally devoted to the tandoor, veggies and pulses, and a broad lineup of savory lamb and goat dishes.
Source: Tampabay.com