Weekend of Culinary Delights

Last week culminated in indulgence of food, food and more food. Did I mention Food?

Yes it started some time midweek when I went to City Centre. The first time around early in the week I was a bit disappointed by the long queue outside KFC and had to go back home and have home cooked food. Not that I’m complaining! But when you’re so close to KFC and have the urge, you do want to indulge in some of those sumptuous fried monster pieces of chicken.

Not to be disappointed again, I made an unscheduled (read: well planned) stop at city centre on Thursday and voila! No queue. I ordered a Zinger meal with chicken and extra large fries with Coke and a Snacker to go with it. The service and meal quality left much to be desired, but KFC after so long. Yum! Yum!

I just get the feeling that the establishment has got a bit complacent owing to the fact that they are always packed that they have forgotten the basics. So here’s hoping that they don’t drive themselves to the point that they shut down due to driving away quality conscious customers.

Follow this up with Friday night at Tangra. I had finished work and with nothing better to do, decided to head to cheap drinking place called Big Boss in Tangra (China Town). Big Boss is the Mecca of most office goers for serious drinking. Add to that some great Chinese snacks and you could be there all night. Fortunately for me, we got there at about 6 pm because my friend had 9.50 pm flight back to Delhi. So beer started flowing and to go with that we ordered one of my favourite and quite unique and common in Kolkata starters: Prawn Chips. The white large flat fried chips with the red border goes great with Beer or for that matter any alcohol.

As we knocked back beers, I in my jubilance offered to drop him to the airport. Drinking time got extended by half an hour and Chilli Chicken and some other stuff followed while we knocked back several more beers each till the time had come to leave.

At 8 pm when we were leaving I noticed that my car was parked in what was a double level parking. While I was parking my car, I wondered what the top level was. The drinking seemed to have enlightened me a bit.

So while we were going to the airport I made a pit stop to pick up my wife and dropped my friend to the Netaji Subhash Chandra Airport. On the way back we realised it was a Friday night and it was only 9 pm. So home was definitely not on the cards. Some Place Else would also have to wait till Saturday. So what would we do?

“The Stadel” was suggested. I had never been there and had heard so much about the place over the past month and half that I jumped at the idea. A few phone calls later, we had a plan. We were meeting up with a couple of friends at The Stadel. It’s an amazing drive in to The Stadel; lined on both sides with roman type columns and creepers and the Colossal Salt Lake stadium facing you. The Stadel is located in the southern wing of the majestic Salt Lake Stadium. This 18 room hotel is little known to most people, but the bar called “HEKA” is frequented by most of the BPO crowd and a lot of residents of Salt Lake. An Egyptian theme is the setting and the place has a female DJ to add to that. But the killer is that it offers very cheap booze.

So the drinking continued and at the end of the night they had to throw the four of us out of there as we had gone way past their regular hours. And all the beer drinking and snacks for only Rs. 1400/-. The Stadel, “I’ll be back”.

Sunday Morning couldn’t laze in bed coz I had made up my mind that I would catch that jazz performance at Afraa. Woody Jarrod had performed there on Friday night, but because of my busy schedule I couldn’t catch his performance then. Fortunately he was playing there on Sunday and Afraa had put together a Sunday Buffet with live Jazz Music. I wasn’t going to miss this one. Priced at Rs. 575/- per person and with a huge spread and beer to go, we were there first to arrive at about noon. Draught Beer to start with and then a look at the huge spread that had been laid out exquisitely made my mouth water and stomach rumble. Just looking at the way the buffet had been laid out was a treat for my eyes.

The food apart the musician took a little longer than I anticipated getting on with his gig. But when he did, I was enthralled by his performance. He oscillated between the saxophone and his flute. I think he even used a pan flute at times. His accompaniment was a laptop computer with a mini mixer which was streamed into the speaker system of the restaurant. Jazz was the mainstay of the late afternoon but he did delve into some different sounds which were evidence of his residing in the subcontinent for an extended period of time. There were influences of Indian classical and folk sounds in his routine.

Among some of the esteemed guests enjoying the Sunday afternoon was Mr. Ram Ray on the table next to us. I definitely wouldn’t miss a gig like this if it were put together at Afraa again.

By the time we were done with dinner, I was wary of the impending dinner we had been invited to. Mother’s Day or any other day these days have been made excuses to go out and celebrate. Well done Archies and Hallmark for earmarking such days almost 365 days of the year to make your cash registers ring. Anyway we were invited by my in-laws to go out for Mothers Day dinner.

So after resting for what seemed to be the shortest break between two meals, we set out again. South City Mall was the destination where we had plans to try out the new Mainland China outlet. Wishful thinking on a Sunday evening, but we still went ahead and landed on the top floor of the packed mall to try our luck. We got there at about 9.20 pm and were told that there would be a 90 minute wait. 90 minutes? Ok I was game considering the amount I had eaten that afternoon at Afraa, but unanimous decision taken, we headed out to Comics.

The food was its usual best at Comics with orders of Lamb and Chicken steaks et al. If you want to try something really good there try their mocktails.