SEEING as I go zipping past the place every night on the way home, it was only a matter of time before the lure of Saffron proved too much.
And when I stopped in – a slightly tricky feat given it is hard by the A90 – to pick up a menu, that lure proved even stronger.
Who could resist a set meal for two for £24.95? Not us, so we picked up a feast later the same night on the way back from a shopping trip to Portlethen.
We’d phoned ahead and the order was ready for us – in two reassuringly heavy bags.
Once home, we set about the two promised starters – and crispy poppadoms – with gusto.
The three onion bhaji were flat pancake-sized delights of crispy veg, subtly seasoned.
The chicken chaat offered up a rich stew nestling in a light roti that had us fork-fighting over it.
And on to the main attraction ... which included the tastiest Bombay potato, which was not listed as part of the meal deal, so came as a welcome surprise, as did the two cans of Coke.
The tatties went perfectly with my lamb zeera chilli.
This was a tender, meaty rich dish that was packed with garlic onions and tomatoes. The whole cumin seeds gave it a fresh, liquoricey lift. I had wondered what “Bengali chillis” were as I bit into one. Hot. That’s what they are.
Meanwhile, Mrs B was giving big licks to her chicken West Bengal masala.
It was similar to the zeera, but tangier and without such an in-your-face blast of fiery chilli.
It was aided and abetted by spinach running through the sauce, but the promised chick peas were curiously absent. That didn’t detract from the riot of flavours on the plate, though.
With two pilau and a garlic naan to get through we had to concede defeat at the amount of food in front of us.
Still, that meant a tasty leftover lunch for two the next day.
We enjoyed this so much that a sit-in meal at Saffron is very much in our future.