Modern Indian Dining — Mayfair

Ten courses. Three thousand miles of India.

A tasting menu that travels — Gujarat to Bengal, coast to court — cooked over fire, finished with restraint, and seasoned from one of London's most serious spice libraries.

Reserve a table The Journey menu
Butter-gold curry in a brass bowl beside blistered naan and scattered spices

The Story

One country. A hundred cuisines.
One long table in Mayfair.

India is not one kitchen. It is a wet coast and a dry desert, a Mughal court and a fishing village, a hill station where cardamom grows wild in the shade. Saffron was opened to cook that whole map — not as nostalgia, but as it tastes now.

We buy single-estate spice the way others buy wine: Lakadong turmeric from Meghalaya, Guntur chillies sun-dried on rooftops in Andhra, true Kashmiri saffron from the Pampore plateau. Fish comes up daily from Cornwall; the masalas are ground each morning, never the night before.

“A great curry is architecture. Every spice is load-bearing, and nothing decorative survives.”

— Anjali Rao, Chef Patron

The result is The Journey: ten courses, three thousand miles, two and a half hours. You will not need dinner tomorrow.

The Spice Room

A library, kept under lock.

Behind the kitchen sits a temperature-controlled room holding over two hundred origins. Six define the house. Ask, and we will open the jars at your table.

  • Saffron

    Pampore, Kashmir. Picked at dawn, three stigmas to a flower; bloomed in warm milk, never water.

  • Green Cardamom

    Idukki, Kerala. Shade-grown in the Western Ghats; cracked seconds before it meets the pan.

  • Kashmiri Chilli

    Colour first, heat second. The deep lacquer-red of our rogan josh and vindaloo.

  • Fenugreek

    Nagaur, Rajasthan. Bitter green kasuri methi, rubbed between palms over the finished sauce.

  • Stone Flower

    Dagad phool — a lichen with the scent of wet earth and old libraries. The secret in every dum.

  • Black Cumin

    Kala jeera from the high valleys of Kashmir. Smokier, finer, rarer than its cousin.

Chef Anjali Rao plating a course in the glow of the open kitchen

Chef Patron

Anjali Rao

Raised between her grandmother's kitchen in Chennai and the spice godowns of Mattancherry, Anjali cooked her way through Delhi, Lyon and London before opening Saffron in 2021. Her cooking holds two truths at once: technique can always be sharper, and a masala ground by hand will always beat the machine.

She still tastes every batch of garam masala herself, every morning, before the first table is laid.

“People ask if this is authentic. It is authentic to India as she is today — confident, precise, and not waiting for anyone's permission.”

Private Dining

The Durbar Room

Behind a carved rosewood door sits our private room: one table of fourteen, a jali screen lit from behind, and a menu written for the evening alone. Whisky pairings from Amrut and Indri; a tableside biryani opened with some ceremony.

Seats 8–14 · From £185 per guest · durbar@saffronmayfair.co.uk

Enquire

Reservations

An evening in saffron awaits.

Two sittings nightly. The Journey is served to the whole table; à la carte is available in the bar.

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Hours

Tuesday – Saturday
First sitting 17:30
Second sitting 20:45

Sunday lunch
12:00 – 15:00

Find us

12 Mount Row
Mayfair, London W1K 3SF

Green Park · Bond Street

Speak to us

020 7946 0竟018
reservations@saffronmayfair.co.uk

Parties of seven or more,
please call directly.