[Ravveendrra]

Last week 3 of us went to Pleasant Point (Rd. No. 10) Banjara Hills - left after the mosque just after Karvy.

The one item that stood out was their Samarkhand Naan. We had ordered Ajwain Naan, Samarkhand and one more (my memory lives up to its reputation).

The naan went with Rogan-e-josh (excellent) and another equally good gravy item (again the name escapes me now). Their Qubani ka meetha was rather a disappointment.

The place is clean but the decor is basic. We chose to sit outside as the inside was quite stuffy. Total damages for 2 gravy and 5 naans was about 600.

Place is highly recommended for the quality of their food - total VFM.

Cheers,

[mobike008]

After deliberating 'Sholay' for tonight's dinner.We decided to head to "Sagar-Papaji Ka Dhaba" as werent in the mood to drive too far.

Sunday's they attract crowds by the hordes. However, knowing the folks got us a table pretty fast.

We ordered the following which the waiter on my request got bit extra ( as in gravy, quantity and with better quality of meat)

Chilly Fish
Ginger Chicken ( 1/2)
Butter Naan and Rotis
Mutton Biryani ( Couldnt finish, ended quite a bit as take-away)

All items were fresh, hot, amazingly delicious and i am never disappointed by my visit to papaji.

If you want to eat a biryani right off the handi, then visit this place late on a sunday. One of the most delicious biryani.

If your looking at a rustic yet fulfilling eating experience. It takes a lot to beat this leader.

OT: I happened to see three sardar gentleman ( seated on different tables) with sizes ( actually their girth) so huge that i havent seen such healthy people yet in Hyderabad.

[SILVERWOOD]

On Saturday afternoon after some shopping at Big Bazaar,i visited Meghna''s spicy food (take away) @ Balkampet and ordered the following.

Chicken Dry- 90 Rs
Chicken Biriyani Rice- 60 rs
Egg Curry- 20 Rs

The stuff is spicy enough to fire up your taste buds.
Highly recommended take away joint.

Betw:His other two branches are at Ameerpet and Moti Nagar.

[hyd_traveller]

The Grand Wok

I hosted a lunch for 17 (including me) this sunday at The Grand Wok, Ground Floor, Adjoining Xtreme Sports Bar, Alcazar Plaza, same building as Neeru's, Just after Taj Krishna, Road No. 1, Banjara Hills.

The restaurant is spread over 2 floors and I got the 1st floor blocked for my party thus giving us absolutely exclusivity.

We opted for 299/- ++ buffet which meant we would get 1 soup, 3 veg starters, 3 n/v starters, 1 noodle, 1 fried rice, 1 veg gravy and 1 n/v gravy with 1 n/v starter being either prawn or fish.

I negotiated the deal with the owner, Mr. Sasank and asked him to add in 1 welcome drink, 1 coke with the main course, increase the starters from 3 each to 5 each, keep both fish and prawns in the starters instead of either as per their rules, serve both veg and n/v fried rice and also veg and n/v noodles, all of which he was very happy to agree to.

He had got the tables re-organised on the 1st floor which gave us very good seating arrangements so that no small sub groups were formed over the meal and everyone was able to see each other and also converse.

The welcome drink was green, red & yellow coloured mocktails. The veg starters were Crispy Potato, Potato Fingers, Crispy Vegetables, Veg Manchurian and one more which I do not remember. N/V starters were Chicken DrumSticks, Prawns, Fish, Chicken Manchurian and Chilly Chicken. One could choose the soup from their a-la-carte menu and people took sweet corn, cantonese, hot & sour, lemon corainder and some others as per individual choices.

The service was like Rajdhani Thali where the waiters kept coming back with plates and plates of starters without a break and allowing one any time for a breath.

All in all, it took us 2.5 hours to finish the lunch and the cost was Rs. 5,814.95 for 17 pax.

For those who have not been there, they have buffet concept but with a twist, there is no buffet table and the food is served a-la-carte style with each round of food coming absolutely fresh from the kitchen thus giving you the benefit of eating piping hot food in a-la-carte style at buffet prices.

All others except my family were visiting the place first time and were heard discussing their future visits to the restaurant.

PS : Opt for the 225/- ++ lunch buffet on weekdays as that is the best VFM.

[MileCruncher]

Originally Posted by SILVERWOOD

Betw:His other two branches are at Ameerpet and Moti Nagar.

Where exactly is it in Ameerpet? Might get a takeaway tonight.

Btw I intend to take wifey out for dinner tomorrow and was toying between BBQ Nation or 36 BBQ.

Our in house foodies, please let me know the pros and cons of both and please shed some light on the pricing for buffet as well.

Cheers

[traveloholic]

Originally Posted by MileCruncher

Where exactly is it in Ameerpet? Might get a takeaway tonight.

Btw I intend to take wifey out for dinner tomorrow and was toying between BBQ Nation or 36 BBQ.

Our in house foodies, please let me know the pros and cons of both and please shed some light on the pricing for buffet as well.

Cheers

I would say BBQ Nation Ani. Never found 36 BBQ worth it. Been there twice and both the times, it was hellish food there. Had to leave the place with a bad taste in the mouth. Chatees is out of my list for ever

[bblost]

Originally Posted by MileCruncher

Where exactly is it in Ameerpet? Might get a takeaway tonight.

Btw I intend to take wifey out for dinner tomorrow and was toying between BBQ Nation or 36 BBQ.

Our in house foodies, please let me know the pros and cons of both and please shed some light on the pricing for buffet as well.

Cheers

36 BBQ was BAD. Very bad. In terms of food/ service everything. Hated that place.

Originally Posted by traveloholic

I would say BBQ Nation Ani. Never found 36 BBQ worth it. Been there twice and both the times, it was hellish food there. Had to leave the place with a bad taste in the mouth. Chatees is out of my list for ever

BBQ Nation is very very good.

[SILVERWOOD]

Originally Posted by MileCruncher

Where exactly is it in Ameerpet? Might get a takeaway tonight.

Btw I intend to take wifey out for dinner tomorrow and was toying between BBQ Nation or 36 BBQ.

Our in house foodies, please let me know the pros and cons of both and please shed some light on the pricing for buffet as well.

Cheers

Its Behind maitrivanam, opp to some famous BAR ONE.

Please try to reach early, he is normally sold out by 8-30pm

[mobike008]

Anirudha Basu, how can you even think of 36 Chatees when BBQ Nation is there????

I recommend BBQ Nation which is priced at Rs.600/head All Inclusive for dinner.

Along with that dont forget to order a mint flavoured drink ( dont remember if its cola, jaljeera or what) priced at Rs.70 per glass which is a MUST to go with the buffet. I needed 2 glasses to wrap up the buffet. Very refereshing !!!

I am sure you being a Bengali would do proper justice to Crabs, Fish, Prawns et.all which all will be part of the starters.

Enjoy !!!

[arcotsrinivas]

I would recommend BHPian's passing over BHEL towards Patancheru to try Biryani at Silver Bawarchi BHEL X Road's the Quality and Quantity is perfect and the price of Rs.130/-for a Handi (Mutton or Chicken) which is enough for two people is a crowd puller.

[Ravveendrra]

Originally Posted by mobike008

Anirudha Basu, how can you even think of 36 Chatees when BBQ Nation is there????

I recommend BBQ Nation which is priced at Rs.600/head All Inclusive for dinner.

Along with that dont forget to order a mint flavoured drink ( dont remember if its cola, jaljeera or what) priced at Rs.70 per glass which is a MUST to go with the buffet. I needed 2 glasses to wrap up the buffet. Very refereshing !!!

I am sure you being a Bengali would do proper justice to Crabs, Fish, Prawns et.all which all will be part of the starters.

Enjoy !!!

I was there at BBQ nation a few weeks ago with +1/2. The 1/2 is charged half price.

The menu for starters was interesting - Goan fish (very good), T. Prawns (okay), Crabs (neat sauce but the size of the crab is small which means there is more shell than meat), some version of mutton seekh kebabs, jacket potatoes, paneer skewers, veg skewers and some others including chicken kebabs.

The best of the starters was the goan fish, really excellent. The sauce used for the crab was good but the crabs themselves were too small. The mutton kebabs had some rough edges on the spice front and were disappointing. The prawns were pretty good. The chicken kebabs were merely satisfactory. The jacket potatoes were very good. The rest of the vegetarian fare was, well, merely an apology for food for the veggies.

The buffet had the usual fare and the only interesting thing was the mutton in a plum sauce, this was pretty good with the flavours coming through nicely and went well with the noodles on offer in the buffet. The spread of salads too was good and since most of the cutomers were averse to salads that evening, we managed to get really good helpings. They had a coriander soup which was exactly what was needed to ease the passage of food.

The array of desserts was fair but most were too sweet. Their 'white forest' was the best of the lot and we did have seconds (all resolutions notwithstanding). Talking about too sweet - I had ordered for some concoction from the bar (no infractions here) which was supposed to be lemon-grass and curry-leaf flavoured. The waiter brought a glass with some syrupy liquid with a faint hint of lemon (and perhaps grass) with a curry-leaf floating on it. That curry leaf floating on it should have warned me but, I went on to have it. Must be one of the rare instances when I had dessert served before the rest of the meal!

I had been to BBQ nation just after they opened and then I noticed that they were over-eager to stop the starter service (we of course would insist that the charcoal in the grill on the table be replinished twice before we said finito to starters). Not too happy with that attitude, I restricted my visits there. Happily things got better with time and they were not so eager to insist that we move on to the buffet. This visit however had the same old phenomenon re-surface in a different form. They are really stingy with the mutton and crab and one has to sit on their head to get them served at the table. They do regularly bring around skewers of chicken, vegetable and paneer - all of which we studiously avoided. They are not too forthcoming with the prawns either but not as stingy with the prawns as they are with the meat and crab.

Verdict - we will visit again (not too frequently though). When we do visit - we shall not order anything from the bar and we shall tell them right in the beggining that we want the meat and crab etc. and that we want them in substantial quantities.

Cheers

[mobike008]

@Ravvs, my experience was wonderful at BBQ Nation. As you rightly said, not all starters would be out of this world. There would be a mix of good and average.

I am not sure the day you visited they served Mutton Roganjosh in their main course. Even that is outstanding ( another place i love that is Angeethi).

Yet to try in Sholay as been hearing lot of praises from Silverwood. I remember ordering it once when we had dinner there but, i cannot recall its taste

[msvg]

Tried buffet in 4 seasons Madhapur,Awesome spread of Non Veg starters and Deserts .Had Chicken,mutton and fish in the menu.
The star of thes dishes were Fish fingers and Mutton biryani.
Each buffet costs Rs 299/- + taxes.

[bblost]

And I had my lunch at four seasons at In Orbit mall.

2 of us, ordered a biryani combo, pather ka gosh, 1 tandoori roti.

The combo contained some chicken biryani, khubani ka meetha and raita.
It costs Rs 220. The roti was Rs 18. The Pather ka gosh was about Rs 250 or so.

Total bill was Rs 501/-

The buffet would have been a much more VFM meal.
But we did not plan on the In Orbit Food Court. Just went there and decided on the spur of the moment.

[MileCruncher]

Yesterday we decided to go to BBQ Nation for lunch. Because it was a holiday wanted to reserve a table but they refused stating that they only take reservations between 12-12.30 PM. Reached there around 1.30 and were shocked to see a queue outside akin to one generally found outside the clinic of a well known GP. On getting our names listed, we were told to wait for about an hour by which time we might get lucky. I suggested wifey about going to some other place and coming back in the evening but the prospect of similar waiting times in the evening along with crowd on the roads was not very appealing. So we decided to continue waiting. At around 2.25PM just when my patience was at its nadir, wifey went and spoke to the hostess who suggested that if we were ready to share the extreme ends of a 8 seater table with another couple, they could seat us immediately. Faced with the option of waiting another 15 minutes, we relented.

Lebanese Chcken, Mutton Seekh Kabab, Malai Tikka ( or some of its variation) were on offer in Non - Veg as starters. Grilled small potato, Paneer Tikka along with Grilled Corn & Vegetables.The service was fast and the staff didn't shirk in terms of replenishing the skewers on the Tandoor.

The main course buffet was more than ordinary with the the Karimeen with Bones and Crab curry providing the only ray of hope. Since we were quite full with the starters and salad, wifey skipped the main course and moved straight to desert. But me slowly becoming the quintessential Hyderabadi, needed Biryani to finish my meal. And what a wrong decision it was. Hyderabadi Dum Biryani was on offer and one spoon made me realise that I had tasted the worst Biryani of my life with the rice half cooked and the heat not properly cooked. Gave up instantly to move to desert of Vanilla Ice-cream with chocolate sauce to finish my meal.

Now at Rs.300 /- + Tax, I think its an absolute VFM and will definitely head back soon.

P.S: As suggested by mobike008, I had masala cola and it was awesome. A definite must have.