There may be hundreds of restaurants I’ve yet to try in Philadelphia, but sometimes, I just want to be lazy and stay a bit closer to home. So we drove up the street for a nice and easy dinner at Tiffin in Wynnewood. I really like the feel of this place. It’s completely casual and free of pretension. And considering it’s on the main line, that can sometimes be very hard to come by. And it’s a BYOB people. Score! We got one of the monthly appetizer specials, the Tandoori Broccoli. It is broccoli marinated with herbs and spices and cooked in the traditional clay oven. It wasn’t anything great, just smoky broccoli. But we both love broccoli so we enjoyed it.

I think my whole reason for ever eating indian food is for the naan. It’s just some of the best bread you could ever eat. Some onion and garlic naan that we housed. I think I prefer the garlic naan here a little bit more than the onion one, because the garlic one is slightly more crispy. The onion one is a bit more soggy.

We went smart and just split the Chicken Korma as our entree. For anyone new to indian food, this is an extremely safe dish to try. It is big hunks of chicken breast cubes in a creamy cashew sauce. The sauce is incredibly rich and creamy, after all, it’s made with ground cashews. It has a nice and mild flavor, and won’t offend anyone, especially if you have an aversion to flavors you may traditionally associate with indian food, such as curry or cumin. It’s a perfect dish for dipping your naan into. It’s as if they created it as a vehicle for the naan to enter into my gullet. Yeah, I’ll say it, the chicken korma was my naan delivery device. And it was an excellent naan delivery device.

F had sent us a link to a byob sushi place weeks ago, and we finally were able to make plans to check it out. A fairly newish spot, open since February, Fat Salmon is a sleek and modern place in Washington Square. The decor actually reminds me of Morimoto’s a bit, probably due to the waviness in some of the design elements. All of the furnishings are clean and white. On a weekday evening, the place was pretty packed. Since it was a byob, M brought along a japanese cocktail concoction. It was delicious and strong and had me at first sip.

I love the standard green salad with the ginger dressing that is offered by pretty much any and every sushi restaurant. But not all of the ginger dressings are up to par. I’m happy to say that the green salad here was one of the best. There’s even cucumber and green bell pepper slices and the dressing is zesty and amazing. And it’s a good sized salad. The miso soup is perfectly nice as well.

On the right, that slop of mess, is the Rolling Fire. It is a roll with shrimp tempura and cucumber, topped with broiled spicy scallop sauce and some imitation crab meat. And oh, it’s like totally spicy. Man, it surprised me. You can see that it’s sort of sitting in a red pool of firey oil. It’s still good, but it is quite the shocker. So be careful! On the left is Mr. Shiro, one of my favorites of the evening. It is eel tempura, avocado, crunch w/spicy sauce on the inside, topped with broiled spicy white tuna and tomato.

Here is the Dragonfly Roll, which actually does look like a dragon. It has shrimp tempura, cucumber, and spicy sauce on the inside, and is topped with eel, avocado, and eel sauce. There’s nothing about this roll that anyone could dislike. It’s great.

On top is the White Forest, my absolute favorite roll of the evening. It was shrimp tempura on the inside with spicy sauce (you could also get salmon tempura), topped with a heap of pico de gallo and our cream. It was like a sushi salsa roll, and I absolutely went crazy for it. On the bottom is the Lost Rainbow, with spicy crab stick, scallion, and masago on the inside, topped with tuna, salmon, white fish, ikura in sesame soy sauce, and cucumber. This would have been really good, but the ikura on top was super salty and it kind of ruined it for me. It overpowered everything when it could have been a nice compliment. So it turned out to be my least favorite roll of the evening. All in all, this was great food with great friends. Fat Salmon is a nice find. Their main thing seems to be crazy rolls. Their menu had dozens. So if you like a great variety of special rolls, then this is the place for you!

Tiffin is now starting to have a little indian take-out empire in the philadelphia area. The first main line incarnation of Tiffin has recently opened in Wynnewood. Seeing as how I live so close by, M and I stopped by there the other night to check it out. It’s got a nice, airy, and colorful dining area, with a little bit of outdoor dining as well. The kitchen is fully visible.

We ordered a lamb dish, which was a special for May. It was lamb cubes cooked with onions in a slightly spicygravy. This was delicious and the lamb was beyond tender! It melted in your mouth. We also got an order of onion naan, as naan is like the crack of the bread world.

We also ordered the malai kofta – vegetable and cheese dumplings in a creamy sauce. I love this type of mild indian sauce. It’s perfect for sopping up with naan. We also got garlic naan as well, as that’s probably my favorite type of naan. We wanted to try everything, but you know, we only had two stomachs between us.

The service was a bit weird. We got seated right away and they swiftly brought over water and a bottle opener for our beers. It’s BYOB, by the way. But then nothing happened. We didn’t get menus for a disturbingly long time. Finally, I had to ask for them. When we got them, he apologized. We also ordered papadum, but they never came out. That was ok though, as we had plenty of food and it came out pretty quickly. The odd dine-in service doesn’t really concern me though as Tiffin really is much more of a take-out place anyway, and as long as the food is good, I’m happy. And the food is definitely good!