It's never a good sign when you drive up to a business and the parking lot is empty. To be fair, it was 5:30 p.m. on Super Bowl Sunday, but still, this is an Indian/Pakistani restaurant, so you'd think the typical crowd might be more World Cup and less Big Game.\n\nIt's an even worse sign when you see vinyl lettering on the window of an Indian restaurant that reads \""Salon de Fiestas.\"" And sure enough, walking into Saffron for the first time, it doesn't feel at all like a cozy Indian restaurant. It feels like a banquet room. Only two booths, the rest of the expansive room filled with round-top banquet tables, chairs covered in plastic, a little stage in the corner. And COMPLETELY EMPTY.\n\nAn Indian restaurant should smell like, I dunno, Indian food when you walk in. This place didn't. It smelled like ... an old folks' home. Or something. Something not right. And it was dead quiet in there. Not even a TV or radio on.\n\nThere was one person visibly working in the entire place, a middle-aged woman who was helpful enough but not very friendly. You think she'd be thrilled to see even one person, let alone a couple, walk in. Not so. She kind of just gestured toward whatever table we wanted, dropped off menus, and disappeared. Didn't ask us for drinks or anything.\n\nThe menu was typical Indian fare, and prices were about average. We ordered some of our favorites -- veggie samosas, pakora, chicken tikka masala, aloo gobi, as well as some rice and two kinds of naan. At the same time, the host/server/whatever finally took our drink orders. Sadly, this joint doesn't serve alcohol. I hate it when I can't order a good Indian beer with my meal.\n\nIt took a long time to get even our drinks (water and iced tea) out, which came with the appetizers. The samosas were OK. The pakora was weird. I'm used to pakora being similar to tempeh -- just vegetables dipped in batter and fried. These were more like spongy batter balls with diced veggies inside. Maybe they're more \""authentic,\"" I don't know, but they sucked.\n\nThe entrees were solid. Nothing to write home (or, um, on Yelp) about, kind of weak-flavored, but decent. The naan was good enough. \n\nWe had a Restaurant.com gift certificate to use, and when the lady first looked at it, she said, \""That's not us.\"" She said this because their logo didn't print, and she thought the \""missing image\"" graphic was someone else's logo. I had to point out to her the NAME AND ADDRESS AND PHONE of her own business. She did eventually take the discount off our bill.\n\nInterestingly, at some point, a man and his child walked in during our meal, heartily greeted us, and I assume he is the owner or manager at least, which leads me to believe our host/server might have been his wife. Maybe she was grumpy that she had to work by herself while he was watching the Big Game or something. Had he been there when we first arrived, we might have felt better. But either way, we're never going back here, which is a shame, because it is literally walking distance from our house.