Karen Wright: Tasty lunch with a lesson all about saffron

Finishing off the meal with a delicious cup of saffron tea

I don’t really enjoy shopping much; I am quite indecisive choosing presents, so I often come home without anything. However, I did get lucky and found some smashing things, so I felt very pleased with myself. I had arranged to meet a friend for lunch, and I had

worked up an appetite and was looking forward to something tasty.

We found a small café cum restaurant on The Springs, it has only recently opened, and we were keen to try it out. It is called The Nostalgic Café and it serves Persian and Turkish food. The menu was quite extensive with breakfasts, wraps, plus starters, mains and desserts. Everything was authentic either Persian or Turkish, including the breakfasts which sounded very delicious.

We decided to order from the mains menu: I chose creamy saffron chicken and rice, and my friend chose lamb chelo with rice and a choice of sides. Honestly when it arrived at the table it looked gorgeous and so fragrant. We tucked in and polished it all off, two clean plates. I asked about the saffron and I learnt all about how to prepare and use saffron and some interesting facts too. I knew that ounce for ounce saffron is more expensive than gold, but I didn’t know why. Apparently, it is very labour intensive to harvest and a slow process, I also discovered that 95 percent of saffron is produced in Iran.

To finish off the delicious meal we ordered a Persian ice cream, which I think it is the best ice cream I have ever tasted. It was bright yellow due to the saffron and topped with pistachios, rose syrup and 24k gold leaf! Now I like a cuppa at the best of times but the saffron tea we finished the meal with was superb, served in a tiny glass teapot, drunk out of tiny glasses and served with a cube of Turkish delight on the side, if you get a chance, pop into the Nostalgic Café and see for yourself.

This week I am going on another fun trip. We’re heading to Swansea with my mum. She was born and raised there, and we are keen to take a walk down memory lane and meet up with some of our remaining family.