Barbeque Nation

and the New Year's Celebration

Basting & Barbeque

Thai baby potatoes and vegetables on the skewers

Skewer Samurai and the team

Live music

Polarized ends, Veg idhar, Non-Veg Udhar, Baaki sab bahar ;)

The glass walled kitchen, the BBQ flaring there and the buffet

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Pacific Blue and Strawberry Mocktails

Exactly on the 6th day of the year my team decided to celebrate the New year!

The other 'A' sent out the invites, it said lunch at Barbeque Nation followed by games. We were not quite sure what to expect. I had heard a lot about the place so wanted to go for the experience. There were others who were away, either travelling or busy with meetings and some others who simply like to stay in their shells. Well but let me tell you those who joined us enjoyed both the food and the fun.

I was wishing new year to P, who is on a break from work to be with her baby and she was happy that the lunch was in her neighborhood. Come over she said. So that's what we did. Baby Anirudh is now a rolly polly bundle unlike the tiny thing we saw when he was a new born. Then she came over to BN to say hello to everyone.

We were in the neighborhood so dropped in at her home

By the time I joined the rest of the team they were settled down in their chairs. There was live music by a Keyboard artist. The place we got was on the 2nd floor, the lighting was just right not too bright and not too dim.

I was looking around to enjoy the theme of a Barbeque place. The colors used are warm porcelain and wood tones. The tables were arranged for big groups with grills fitted in the middle of the table, each to be shared by 4 people. I liked the square chairs with leather cushion and the thought put in to keep them open from one side for easy movement. In formal places when you have a chair that holds you like a baby on a high chair I get put off. Also the tables are slightly lower as they hold the grill but it is also considerate towards us Indians as we are a smaller sized race. So BN gets full marks for the detailing the decor. I loved the glass walled kitchen which gave a view of what was cooking and seeing the large grill flare up my hunger pangs grew stronger.

Our grills were fired with charcoal as we awaited the loaded skewers to take their place. Oh yes as we normally do the team was polarized into a veggie and no-veggies group.

The veg starters were barbequed Thai baby potatoes, cut vegetable viz peppers, broccoli, cauliflower etc. and chutney marinated Paneer tikka. The Paneer tikka was served straight on the plate. We enjoyed basting the sauces and BBQ on the small grills on our tables.

I loved K's smile, she looked so happy

The loaded skewers are first cooked a bit in the glass kitchen and then brought onto the table. They just keeping getting more till you turn the flag on your table down to signal them to stop. What a great idea! Did I mention the color coding for the plates? Green for the veg and brown for the NVs. The vegetarians had a limited choice but the non-vegetarians enjoyed their stuff as they had more to choose from.

The mocktails were terrible. We tried the Pacific blue and the Strawberry ones. I tell you to skip them. Else go for fresh lime or package soft drinks.

After enjoying the BBQ you move on the buffet not expecting much but believe me the food is good. There were 3-4 non-veg curries and 4 veg curries. The rice consisted of a simple biryani and steamed rice with dal. The vegetarian curries consisted of Lasuni palak, paneer jalferezi, a kofta gravy with marble sized luscious paneer balls, Aloo mutter gobhi which was superb!

There was a veg soup and a non-veg soup too. I skipped the soup, one ought to else you cannot do justice to the rest of the line up.

Oh and remember we are in Blr so there has to be curd rice, pickle and well there was some raita, penne pasta that was sweet, 2 salads that are not worth a mention.

To conclude the experience the deserts were in bite sizes hot gulabjamuns with vanilla ice cream, a standard for a buffet, you get it with all of them but these were juicy. The walnut date pie had a nice filling. Then the pineapple pastry is another restaurant owner's association's favorite I guess ;). Some cut fruits, I picked only pineapples as I love~~ them. The winner however was the orange souffle which was absolutely delectable.

The service was prompt and polite yet I found them a little too attentive when it came to clearing the plates.

If you are looking for the pricing here then this falls in the expensive category and it only goes up right! So no mention of it here. Visit with family and friends you will enjoy the experience.

The team enjoyed the lunch, it was after a long time we were out together and there was lot of laughter and animated conversations. We are grateful that the economic meltdown has just brushed past us and things are OK. We hope to be OK in the future too.

This place has a bar too but our team mostly is not for it ;). We had to get back to work you see.

The desserts: Orange souffle was the winner

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Yeah and we did get back to our office for some games. The first game was to bounce the balloon without letting it fall. The fun is in the fact that we interchange names. You try to remember your real name and the interchanged name and you have people grabbing the balloon when the name is called out.

The second one was my favorite. We were told to design an outfit for a model in our group and then the model had to walk down the ramp. The hitch is you had to make an outfit from newspaper and use cellotape to hold it together. My team decide on "The Knowledge Warrior" and S walked with pomp and conviction. That made us winners.

Dress designing with newspaper!

You have
Recession Ranga, The Knowledge Warrior and The Fairy with no story ;)

The other 2 were Recession Ranga, depicting the tattered look of an affected. While the third team designed an outfit for a fairy but they did not have any story to tell! Just that R looked cutesy.

The last one was a lung test. That is what I would call it, blowing balloons and then tying them in triples. We blew the biggest and finished in time but we let S's group win they finished before us but the balloons were not inflated properly ;).

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Lung test

Believe me and we were not done yet. There was a plum cake cut for those who missed the lunch.

It was fun time and we missed all the other location guys, the videoman and the artist in Pune and the stylebhais in Delhi and ofcourse the 3 new Moms.