Reviewer’s rating ***

The best thing about Cafe Saffron isn’t the delightful menu, which features a range of contemporary dishes from India. Nor is it the polite and deferential service that its waiters offer guests.

You’d have thought that the delicate balance of flavours and spices infusing the chef’s appealing food would have been Cafe Saffron’s raison d’etre.

But no; the restaurant has a unique selling point that isn’t based on food, service or fine cheffery. All hail Cafe Saffron, for it has the world’s most glorious and extraordinary website.

Click on to www.cafe-saffron.com and you’ll find yourself in internet nirvana. The site bhangras like it’s hot from Bollywood, with funktastic music allied to a kitsch yellow and brown homepage. It’s the sort of so-bad-it’s-good experience that has the makings of an instant cult classic.

Cafe Saffron’s homepage is the sort that turns internet browsing on its head. In the noughties’ race for the quickest, fastest, flashiest and best, Cafe Saffron is striding boldly in the opposite direction with the lowest-tech, most-down-at-heel and least-prepossessing online experience. It is, quite simply, brilliant.

We decided to visit Cafe Saffron after finding its website by chance, while Googling Shropshire eateries. Remarkably, it lived up to expectations. It was a slightly surreal experience with an interior that was completely in keeping with the garish online site.

The orange hues of the dining room’s interior induced a sense of almost out-of-body wellbeing and relaxation that I’d normally expect to feel after paying fine money to a masseuse. All of which, of course, put my wife and I in the perfect mood for casual dining.

This is as much as I knew about Cafe Saffron, before visiting. It opened in June 2001 and was started by three ambitious young men who had worked in Indian restaurants in Shrewsbury and in some of the best hotels in Bengal.

Presumably, those restaurants were all about good food, rather than trifling matters like marketing, interior design and online customer attraction. For the chef’s main courses were a treat.

My wife started with a delightful onion bhaji that had been fried to a crisp, with all of the sweet, sticky flavours of the onion coming to the fore.

My saffron chat was delightfully flavoursome with an unmistakable tang. The chicken had been cooked respectfully, so that it remained reasonably moist.

My wife opted for a Cafe Saffron special for her main course. The roshuni baghar comprised marinated chicken with vegetables, herbs and spices with a fried garlic topping.

The flavours burst from it, like a Jack from a box. It ring-a-ding-dinged on her palate and her plate was soon clear.

I opted for the tawa chicken main, a fusion dish cooked to the Cafe Saffron chef’s own secret recipe. Trying to pick out individual spices and herbs from a dish of such subtle construction was great fun. In short, it was a winner.

Our dishes were served with plenty of rice and hot, fluffy naan breads that were puffed up like pillows. Steam escaped from them as we tore into them to pile them high with our curry and rice.

Cafe Saffron doesn’t offer the best curry in Shropshire. Indeed, there are a few in Shrewsbury that offer Indian cuisine of a slightly higher quality, like Kasturi and, bizarrely, Drapers Hall Restaurant – if you’ve not yet tried their steamed monkfish with coconut and mango curry sauce and saffron rice, then hotfoot your way there right now.

Cafe Saffron doesn’t offer the cheapest prices, though it’s great value for money, nor does it offer an interior that looks as though it straight from the pages of a magazine.

But what Cafe Saffron does offer is a great time out at one of Shropshire’s least fussy, most enjoyable eateries.

The food is good but not great, the prices are affordable without being bargain basement and the service is pleasant without being particularly skilled.

It achieves, however, a rare form of synergy so that the sum of its parts are greater than they really ought to be.

When you do book your table at Cafe Saffron just make sure you do one thing first – check out it’s gloriously unkempt website.

It’s almost – but not quite – as good as the food on offer.

MENU SAMPLE

Starters

Chicken tikka (£3.25)

Dall (£2.95)

Main courses

Pasanda nawabi (£7.50)

Jingha masala diwani (£7.95)

Sides

Aloo gobi (£2.75)

Chips (£1.85)

Desserts

Humpty dumpty (£2.95)

ATMOSPHERE

Lively. There’s plenty of bustle, though the music’s not great

SERVICE

Exceptional. Polite and attentive staff make frequent visits to tables

DISABLED FACILITIES

First-floor restaurant/staff help

Contact

Cafe Saffron, Hills Lane, Shrewsbury. Telephone (01743) 246753.