Thought Crimes

A week or so ago, Horn-ok-Tata! (that's the name we call our wing, owing to the fact that we live in Tata Hall) went to dine at Barbeque Nation. For those interested, the said restaurant also has branches in Delhi, Gurgaon, Bombay, Thane, Chennai, Bangalore, Jaipur and many other towns of India. Owing to its rapid development, it's only a matter of time before there's one in Roorkee as well. A toast to that at this point.

The system at Barbeque Nation is like this. It's a buffet. They start with kebabs and keep serving you till you feel that you'd better move on to the main course. To indicate the same, there's a little flag at your table that you drop. After that, you enjoy the main course and finish off with dessert. Oh, and there's a complimentary drink too- either a small 100 Pipers or 2 glasses of Coke. No prizes for guessing what I had.

So we started with the kebabs. Now when we'd entered, if the maitre'd had suffered any heart attack on watchin 9 fully grown and from the looks of it, ravenous guys enter his place, he had done a good job hiding it. The same sadly, cannot be said for the waiters. In the first 2-3 rounds, we had all the kebabs. The mutton seekh was easily the best. Malaysian Prawn had some ingredient which made the taste not too enjoyable. Chicken Tikka and tandoori were fine, but more filling than you want kebabs to be. Overall the qualilty was very good, though not as good as Kebab Factory's or Dal Bukhara's, something which the prices also reflected. Succulent, ideally the first word that comes to mind when describing kebabs, did not come to mind here. So naturally, in the later rounds, we kept re-ordering the Mutton Seekh and the fish kebab, which again was awesome. Much to the surprise and annoyance of the waiter, we even gravitated to the veg kebabs, on discovering that the mushroom one and one particular potato variety were very edible indeed. The flag on our table was given the level of respect second only to the tricolour. It fluttered proudly. Eventually, and at this time a collective sigh of relief could be heard around the restaurant, we decided that enough was indeed enough and the main course must be feeling left out by now.

The main course had the regular soups and varieties of salads, of which I only tried Tuna and French beans. There were a lot of veg dishes that I didn't bother to have a look at. On the meaty side, there was mutton biryani, chicken cooked in red wine, another mutton dish, a fish preparation and crabs in garlic sauce. There was also an option of taking fish and prawns to a guy and getting them fried. By now, we were pretty full with the generous amounts of kebabs that we'd had so didn't exactly hog. I did however, take a helping of the biryani, as here, the mutton was succulent. It was also my first time with crabs and I look forward to more. Although,the pieces served weren't exactly the most helpful. One of us had also got some fish fried, and that was good too.

The best part of the evening however, was the dessert. There were chocolate brownies with vanilla ice-cream, fresh fruits, firni, gulaab jamun, Chocolate Trufle cake. And there was The Cheesecake. It was really really soft. I've never appreciated the phrase "melting in your mouth" more than I did then. The taste was not very sweet, but just right. Each of the 9 of us fell in love with it immediately, and it told. The first 3 of us had already gone and finished off whatever cheesecake was left on the buffet table initally. Then 3 others went and managed to take huge slices that finished off the next cheesecake. The obliging folks replaced it. Some other soul had a bit, then 2 more of us went and finished off that one. Things were desperate now, and while you could imagine the ecstatic cheesecake baker doing his customary dance, the management on the whole wasn't sharing the joy. Yet another cheesecake was brought, yours truly had a large, but gentlemanly bite and other people also had some. The rest however, were by no means done. Another cheesecake was bit into dust. Finally, we had some more gulab-jamuns and trufle cake and called it a very very good night.

The waiter was called. We expressed our immense satisfaction with our experience. He gritted his teeth. We asked for the bill. He brought it and it took all the training he'd received in hotel management school to not throw it at our faces. We wondered aloud if Barbeque Nation offered a student discount and fished out our identity cards for proof.

And that's when he shot us.

PS- Just came back from winning my first quiz here at C. Had on my team a guy uncannily like Rapu- TamBram, lived in Delhi, very similar mannerism and highly eclectic knowledge. Dante's layers of Hell and El Chupacabra, anyone? This guy's much older though. It was as though I was back in that WONA meeting when Atulya was introducing himself.

PPS- The location has changed but fests continue to offer earning oppurtunities. 5k for an online quiz, 5k worth of prizes for the same and 8k for a puzzle solving event. Fingers crossed for getting the cheques and prizes now.