Barbeque Nation is hosting the Mohammad Ali Road food festival in Bangalore from Oct 28 - Nov 15 in all its Bangalore outlets.
For those wondering what is the Mohammad Ali Road (M.A) food festival? It is the famous iftaar street food that is served in M.A road in Mumbai during Eid. We in Bangalore have a similar foodie experience in Bangalore in Mosque Road.
Now, I have always been curious about Iftaar food, but since I am a vegetarian, I have been very hesitant about actually venturing to these food festivals as they specialize mostly in non-veg food.
However, when Barbeque Nation sent an invite inviting me to sample their take on Iftaar food, I jumped at the opportunity. With Barbeque Nation, I know I am in safe hands and that they will have ample options for vegetarians also. After all, I was able to enjoy even their seafood food festival very much.
I spent the first half hour walking around the restaurant scoping the buffet options, the live food stalls, and talking to the chef about all the thought that went into putting this together.
After only a few minutes, it was pretty obvious that they had done their research thoroughly visiting and getting trained by the cooks in Mohammad Ali Road. However, they have tweaked the food a bit to make it more universal. For example, the Zam Zam biriyani which is an Iftaar standard in M.A. Road and has a lot of organ meat. But since not all non-vegetarians in India are comfortable with eating organ meat, the recipes for some of the non-veg dishes have been tweaked a wee bit to accommodate more universal tastes.
In addition to that, for almost every non-veg dish on the buffet, there is an equivalent vegetarian dish so that vegetarians don't feel left out. Isn't that nice?
The zam zam biriyani is the non-veg option containing chicken, mutton, eggs, mixed vegetables, and nuts. The vegetarian equivalent is the Kashmiri pulav, which is also pretty tasty.
The star of the dinner though was the extremely sinful paneer tawa paranthas and the paav bhaji that was sizzling at the live counter. Even the non-vegetarians loved these so much.
It was sinfully rich but equally delicious. Again there were different non-veg options cooked separately.
The rest of the starters were the usual, and as per standard I gorged on my two favorites - grilled mushrooms and pineapples, which are my absolute go-to dishes when I visit Barbeque Nation. Light and flavorsome - they have all the taste without feeling heavy in my tummy later in the night.
Again for the main course, I stuck to the veg options, which were plenty. The advertised menu below only lists out the special items, there were tons more on the buffet, which are not even mentioned in this list. For example, the paranthas and paav bhaji are not even mentioned here!
I kept my main course light or as light as I could keep it when there was so much deliciousness around.
Why? Because I wanted to make sure I had enough room to spare for the desserts, especially this one - the Mawa Khaja, which the chef had insisted earlier was a do-not-miss at any cost sort of dish.
And thank goodness that I listened to him. The mawa khaja was awesome. It's not very heavy, nor is it cloyingly sweet. It was just right, and I tossed down a couple easily.
That coupled with some of the other dessert options made it extremely difficult for me to leave the restaurant at the end.
I had stuffed myself silly with all this food that driving back home in heavy traffic was a bit of a chore.
Still, all worth it though!
