Barbeque Nation

Much awaited Barbeque Nation started operations in Pune from Thursday, 25th Sep. So, we decided to visit the place on Friday evening, on its 2nd day of operation, for our team dinner. Not taking any chance, I located the place in Kalyani nagar & booked a table for us in the afternoon itself. Barbecue Nation is located next to Dass Electronics, Kalyani nagar in Solitaire. We reached there by 7:45 pm and were escorted to our table. The ambience of the restaurant is very aesthetic, with ample seating capacity (220 people) and a beautifully designed seating pattern which gives you a feeling that you are sitting in a small and spacious setting.

They have made excellent use of wall partitions & decorative grass to achieve the feat. The lighting is pleasing and the music being played is just right; not distracting and yet audible. When we reached, only few tables were occupied, so we got the chance to click these pictures. Service was excellent, they had a captain assigned to our table who explained their concept to us and attended us the whole time which was over 3 hours. They promptly refilled the glasses and cleared empty skewers / plates as soon as we were done with them.

The concept of Barbeque nation is to provide you with a great setting to enjoy your evening, without bothering about time (as they have ample space) and your pocket (as they have fixed price & menu). So, all you have to do is enjoy!! They have the concept of live grill. You have live grill right on your table and you are served with unlimited servings of almost (90%) done kebabs as starters. I have seen a similar concept in Sigree, but here It was better. You are also provided with choice of marination (Mint/rosemarry/soya) which you can apply on the kebabs once they arrive, cook it for sometime and then enjoy the kebabs in the flavor you like most. Also, they had a special fork to take out the kebabs from the skewer, which was really useful & was missing in Sigree.

They also had live performance, two beautiful danish singers were enthralling the audience with their deep and soothing voice. Alas, not many people were responding to them, and they responded with a pretty smile for the people who did. We really need more places with live perfornances to create the awareness in people to appreciate the artist, cause it's not the just a music system playing.

For the menu, they have buffet with a pre-decided menu, which consists of 5 veg, 5 non-veg staters, 1 veg 1 non-veg soup, 4 non-veg, 6 veg in main course with roti & naan, 3 non-veg, 5 veg salads & 7 desserts. Buffet price was 450 Rs. plus taxes, which should take the price to approx 500 Rs. Drinks are not included in this, but are not very expensive, in fact they are moderately priced. I personally liked their idea of transparent kitchen right behind the buffet table. So, there is no doubt about the hygiene.

The kebabs were delectable and the food was a treat for the pallets. In kebabs, prawns, achari baby alloo and mutton were the highlight. In main course I personally loved the Crab & the Mutton biryani. The crab preparation was spicy and chinese style, and the aromatic biryani was authentic in taste. I already had three drinks and so didn't try Soups and I was full enough to skip the veg dishes.

In salads, I liked chicken and corn salads the best. However other salads were good and I tried them all. Now it was time for the part of the meal which I love most, the desserts. They had seven desserts and best of them were White Forest Pastry, Orange souffle.

I enjoyed my evening there, spent some quality time with friends doing Tukbandi, carrying the mood of poetry competition. The place was full and also there were some people waiting by 9 pm; provided it was just the second day of their operation, they achieved a great feat here as well. I will recommend this place to everyone who want to enjoy their evening & satisfy their pallet for not so exorbitant price.

All the pics courtesy: Birenderjit Singh Madan