I was looking for Indian food in Cambridge, and was recommended Saffron by a friend. I have to say…read morethat while the food is good, the service is just terrible - the next time I'm craving Indian, I will be sure to try a new place before going back here.
My party of four came at around 12:30pm on a Sunday for lunch. The place was pretty empty, but it still took forever for us to be asked by a waiter what we wanted. The waiter kept trying to dissuade us from dishes without giving a reason or a suggestion for a replacement, and was pretty surprised that we each wanted rice (not included in any of the meals, by the way). We tried to order naan, but were told that we could not (nor any tandoori dish) because they were cleaning the oven. While I'm all for cleaning ovens, perhaps lunchtime during opening hours is not the time for it? (I also wish they had told us this when we were seated and/or looking at the menus, as opposed to actually in the process of ordering).
Our food (3 mains) took an extremely long time to come out of the kitchen - the only other table in there, of one person, had arrived about 15 minutes after us and was served at least 5 minutes before us.
When our food finally arrived, the chapathi we had ordered was completely forgotten. The curries themselves (chicken vindaloo, vegetable madras, and chicken dupiaza) were all excellent, with the dupiaza being my favorite. We had ordered paratha since we could not get naan, which was also good. The onion bhaji was nothing too special, but fine enough. The waiter finally brought out the chapathi after we asked about it, and it was decent.
While trying to pay, we asked the waiter for change, as we were splitting it among four of us and only had larger bills. The waiter said that they did not have any change, but when we finally worked out who would owe what later and put our bills down, magically the restaurant suddenly had coins for change!
(when I told my flatmate about these occurrences, he told me he went there by himself one time and heard the waiters making fun of him behind the small bar due to eating on his own).
Any one of these things I would have written off as just a one-time occurrence, but the combination of these combined with the unapologetic and, at times, rude attitude of our waiter will make me warn people to try elsewhere in Cambridge for Indian.