Tiffin Store

A Northern Liberties service battles Ghee Fatigue.

by Elisa Ludwig

If you've ever taken advantage of one of the local Indian buffet lunch deals, you're familiar with the phenomenon I like to call Ghee Fatigue. With no portion control, you eat until you're slumped over your desk, stuffed with pakoras, completely useless for the rest of the day.

In India, however, workers eat lighter lunches called tiffins, delivered by a complex network of tiffin-carriers. Inspired by this 200-year-old tradition, restaurateur Munish Narula (formerly of Old City's Karma) has opened Tiffin.com, a Northern Liberties-based service that makes fast, inexpensive and, most importantly, light Indian food accessible to Philadelphians and their office-mates.

Online or by phone, customers can order box meals of two entrees, dal, raita and pickles. The real tiffins are homemade lunches, and Tiffin.com is aiming for authenticity — it's the meal your wife would make you if you lived in India and had a wife who made you lunch. The food is cooked in smaller batches, with less oil than restaurant food. This fact is obvious in the vivid colors and distinct flavors of the curries themselves, like the rosy gold aloo gobi with its turmeric-stained cauliflower, potatoes and zingy bits of ginger.

Tiffin.com is part of a growing trend in the United States: Last year, The New York Times reported on a similar service in San Francisco called Annadaata, as well as a less-official network of homemakers offering meals to the Indian workers at Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., campus.

Narula also caters to those who don't want to risk dripping raita on their keyboards. He's added a few brightly colored, organic-shaped tables to the Tiffin.com headquarters and named it Tiffin Store. The kitchen-to-table delivery distance is much shorter here, but the food is still technically on wheels. (Servers use a plastic rolling cart.)

In-Store dining affords a full menu of choices — Tiffin.com has more limited options — and each item arrives piping hot and full of flavor. (If you like your food spicy, you need to ask for it.) There's a mean appetizer of fried tilapia nuggets, their crackly surface sparked with pepper and cumin. Tender-skinned samosas flake open to a rich, buttery filling of peas and potatoes.

It's easy to overdo it buffet-style on the hefty portions of smoky eggplant stewed with tomato, and lamb Chettinad's creamy, coconut gravy flecked with minced curry leaves. And I wanted to curl up with the Peshawari-style naan, which envelops a layer of sweet coconut and finely chopped nuts in warm tandoor-speckled dough. But to my surprise, even after feasting at Tiffin Store, no nap was needed.

(e_ludwig@citypaper.net)

Tiffin Store

710 W. Girard Ave.215-922-1297www.tiffin.com

Hours: Daily, 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m.; 4-9 p.m.

Order by 10 a.m. for lunch (delivered between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.); order by 2 p.m. for dinner (delivered between 5 and 7 p.m.)

Appetizers, $2.25-$4.95; entrees, $5.95-$11.95

Credit cards accepted. BYO. Delivery and takeout available.