September 4, 2008 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Just opened, already packed every night
Tiffin currying favor with Mt. Airy and Chestnut Hill
by LEN LEAR

Chef Rakesh Ramola prepares his fiery Indian dishes authentically with freshly ground spices from India

When Munish Narula began looking for a location for his Indian restaurant, Tiffin, in 2006, he gave no more thought to locating it in Northwest Philadelphia than to locating it in downtown Camden.

“I did not think of Chestnut Hill and Mt. Airy as a potential market,” said the tall, handsome 37-year-old Wharton School graduate who emigrated from New Delhi, India, to the U.S. 16 years ago. “If you had asked me about 100 places I had in mind to open a restaurant, Mt. Airy and Chestnut Hill would not have been on the list.”

But a funny thing happened after Narula opened Tiffin in December, 2006, at 710 West Girard Ave. on the northern border of Northern Liberties. “I began to get phone calls and emails from Chestnut Hill and Mt. Airy,” he said. “In fact, I got so many calls and emails that we started sending drivers to Northwest Philly twice a week all the way from Northern Liberties to make food deliveries.”

Chuck Gupta, a 70-ish resident of Chestnut Hill and retired chemist who was also born and raised in India, has become a passionate cheerleader for Tiffin. “I went down there (to Northern Liberties) and loved the food, so I went back to eat about six or seven times. I also had the food delivered to my house every so often on Mondays and Thursdays, sometimes for private parties.”

Owner Munish Narula stands in front of his new Mt. Airy restaurant, which is lit seductively at night

Tiffin, by the way, is a British word that refers to any lunch or light meal. It has also come to refer to the insulated multi-chambered metal containers that are used to deliver hot lunches to workers in office buildings in India. The often-barefoot deliverymen are called dabbawallas (but in Philly they wear shoes).

Narula, who founded an Indian restaurant in Old City named Karma after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, originally planned Tiffin as a strictly takeout operation, using deliverymen equipped with GPS tracking devices. They delivered meals to Center City, Fairmount, Fishtown, Queen Village and University City, but because of the demand in Northern Liberties, they also opened the storefront BYOB at the Girard Avenue site.

When Narula realized Northwest Philadelphia was a fertile market for his product, he began scouting locations in our area but quickly nixed Germantown Avenue. “I drove up and down Germantown Avenue a few times during rush hour,” he said, “and I realized that my drivers would be getting stuck in traffic. On a Friday night, we can have 50 to 70 deliveries, so the last thing we can afford is to have our drivers stuck in traffic.”

Eventually, Narula signed a 12-year lease at 7105 Emlen St. in West Mt. Airy, which had just been vacated by Hamlet Bistro, a more upscale restaurant than Tiffin. The Mt. Airy Indian restaurant opened July 24 and has been a beehive since day one. About 60 percent of the business has been takeout and delivery.

We visited Tiffin on a Tuesday night in mid-August, but it seemed more like a Saturday night. Every table was occupied, and there were always people outside on Emlen Street waiting for a table to be vacated. All night long other customers were coming in to pick up orders, and drivers were returning to pick up new delivery orders.

Chicken breasts marinated in ajwain, yogurt and sour cream is just $10.50 … lamb Chettinad ($11.95) is flavored with mustard seeds, coconut and curry leaves. (Photos by Jimmy J. Pack Jr.)

“I am very thankful to the people who urged me to open a restaurant here, especially Chuck Gupta,” said Narula. “We expected to do well, but this has been way beyond our expectations. The average wait for a table on a weeknight has been 30 minutes and on weekends, 45 minutes to an hour. We now make deliveries seven days a week, and we will soon start taking internet orders, and we will start deliveries to East Falls and Manayunk.

“And I never had to even put out a ‘Help Wanted’ sign. People from the neighborhood keep walking in here asking for work ... It takes about 25 to 30 minutes to get each order ready, so you’re not going to get your order as fast as you would, say, a pizza, but Indian food travels well because of the spices and the sauces. Countries with hot weather have historically tended to eat spicier food because of their natural preservatives.”

Unlike many ethnic restaurants, Tiffin does not tone down the hot spices for the generally tame American palate. “We cook the dishes the way they’re meant to be cooked,” said Narula, “and the fact that we are BYOB increases the value factor. At our Girard Avenue place, we’ve had groups come in with cases of beer or up to six bottles of wine.”

Most appetizers at Tiffin are under $5, and most entrees are between $8.95 and $11.95. There are 10 vegetarian entrees, all under $10, as well as several monthly specials. You can’t go wrong with any “tandoor” items baked in a traditional clay oven fired by charcoal, and you simply must get one of the “naan” (unleavened white flour) breads used to scoop up almost any of the dishes. My own favorite dish was the shrimp vindaloo — jumbo shrimp cooked in an incendiary sauce from the Western Indian state of Goa and accompanied by basmati rice and mango chutney. A dish like this will obliterate the subtle flavors of any good wine, but it’s a perfect match with a cold craft beer.

I looked at several restaurant blogs to see what customers had to say about the original Tiffin, and they had a lot to say — almost all positive. The comment that really stood out was from Sarah on www.phillyfoodguys.com/restaurant-review/tiffin-an-Indian-surprise-in-northern-liberties: “Tiffin’s a wonderful spot. We had them cater our wedding! And at the wedding, some friends of ours from Bangalore liked the food so much that they asked us to drive food from Tiffin up to New Jersey for their anniversary party. (And they live a few minutes from Edison!) We all stopped in to eat in the dining room, and my friends declared it the best North Indian food they’ve had in the U.S. (And they’ve been here for about 15 years.) I’m addicted.”

And last December the Inquirer’s acerbic critic Craig LaBan called Tiffin the “best ethnic delivery” restaurant in the city. In the February, 2008, issue of Philadelphia Magazine, Tiffin was rated number 30 among “Philadelphia’s Top 50 Restaurants.” (Believe it or not, Tiffin was only four slots below Le Bec Fin, and some outstanding upscale restaurants like Brasserie Perrier were not even listed.) Philadelphia Style Magazine wrote of Tiffin: “This brilliant Indian business is impossibly convenient, laughably inexpensive and uniformly delicious.”