Its true really. There I was sitting in my room pondering on whether I should start a monthly theme for my blogs, so I decided on #MayBuffetMadness. That obviously wasn't enough to cover all the delicious buffets in Bombay (Snapdeal :P) so I decided to make it #MayandJuneBuffetMadness. Now June is also over, am I satisfied? Not really. Its now #FirstQuarterBuffetMadness. My dear accountant and finance friends will be familiar with this terminology, nonetheless on the eve of America's Independence day, I visited yet another buffet around the corner, listened to some Rolling Stones and decided to wind up Season 2 of the blog with more buffets and british bands itself.
Let me start with the Rolling Stones. Arguably one of Britian's finest and biggest commercial successes after the Beatles, the Stones rose to fame largely thanks to their leads Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. Despite popular opinion I am quite reserved when it comes to labeling them as the greatest ever British rock acts of the previous century. I love Mick Jagger for everything that he is and I think Rolling Stones would not have sold half of their records if it wasn't for him, but in many ways The Rolling Stones are just another one of your everyday rock and roll band. They made the most of the resources available and yes they did have some great music, but overall I'd say Rolling Stones would not even feature in my Top 5 even Top 10 british rock groups. I'm a Beatles man thru and thru and after hearing the entire discography of the Beatles, you'd find the Stones shockingly repetitive. Even more so some of their songs are direct covers/copies of Beatles' originals like "I Wanna Be Your Man". The math is simple really, The Beatles made 15 albums, the Stones however made twice as many albums and possibly twice as much money from those albums. Commercial success is one thing, but as you might have noticed I don't care much for that, hell to this day my favorite band is Survivor and they barely sold like 1/100th of what the Rolling Stones did. I don't want to be too critical of Mick Jagger and the Stones, they do have somethings going for them. They gave blues rock and the whole idea of Rock & Roll a whole new meaning with all their music, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger immortalized themselves and forever cemented their status as true rockers alongside the likes of Jim Morrison, Freddie Mercury etc. I mean Keith Richards is one crazy englishman, he's the guy who snorted his own father's ashes - talk about being hardcore. I can't even think of a word to describe that. In this day and age, nobody, not even the biggest Rolling Stones fan would have the patience to sit and go thru 29 studio albums and god knows how many more singles and live albums. I don't care how many albums went #1 and platinum according to Wikipedia, in my book the Rolling Stones are just a decent band and the two CD set of their greatest hits is more than enough to enjoy their music. 40 of their greatest hits aptly called "Rolled Gold Plus" starts off with a bang, CD1 is arguably the better of the two CD's, with their popular songs like "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", "Its All Over Now", "Carol", "Paint it Black", "Lady Jane" and my personal favorite "Mother's Little Helper". CD2 becomes a drag really with the really good songs few and far between with the best one being "You Can't Always Get What You Want" closely followed by "Ruby Tuesday". The former however became such a favorite purely because of that season 4 finale of Californication when Hank Moody drives away into the sunset, that brings out the true meaning of this song. All in all I'd listen to this band once in a while, very rarely, its the kind of band you wouldn't mind hearing if it popped up on Shuffle but you wouldn't yearn for it on a regular basis.
In many ways the same can be said about the Buffet I went to last night. Keys Hotel near Military Road, Marol. Not the 5 star luxury I was used to, but sometimes when the need for meat is on a daily basis, you gotta exhaust all available options. For 299+ tax, this buffet doesn't disappoint. Lunch and Dinner cost the same, the location isn't great but you could visit here once in a while. Not the kinda place you'd want to go with family (guests especially). To be frank this place is nothing more than a 3 star hotel with a good buffet. Sadly their ad's say they have over 40 dishes but what they fail to tell you is that of these 40 only about 6 of them are non vegetarian. Over the past few months I've had a lot of buffets, most of them have had an insane spread - so many different kinds of meat to chose from, I would always have to have little little of everything because they all were equally good. Well this buffet was different. There were only 4 items worth paying for, the Prawn Curry, the Malabar Fish Curry, the Chicken Tandoori and Green Peas Pulao. 5 very very hungry guys entered this place and went to town on these items, each one of us took 3 huge helpings of the above. We didn't even bother wasting our time on the Veg side, and mind you they had quite a decent spread for you veggies - about 4 different main course dishes, biryani, pulao, and a couple of Chinese dishes too. That being said I've come a long way from that boy who used to get only Idli Molgapudi in his school tiffin box. I'd rather eat 2 insane non veg dishes than eat 20 good veg dishes. I will eat Chicken Tandoori anywhere in this country, you can't possibly mess it up, its one of the basic starters in Non Veg cuisine and like expected it did not disappoint. Seafood is usually my Achilles heal mainly because of the fact that I am not too used to the anatomy of a fish/lobster etc. That's why I only prefer prawns as they are so easy to eat. However the Malabar Fish Curry here was out of the world, luckily for me it was boneless so I had no mental block whatsoever and thoroughly enjoyed it with the pulao. But without a doubt the Prawn Curry had to take the cake. Easily the best prawn curry I've had in my life, it may not have been the richest or the best in terms of quality, or maybe it was the fact that I was just very hungry, but never have I enjoyed Prawns this much as I did at Keys Hotel Marol. Simply devine I tell you. This was one such buffet were we went for quantity over quality. We each must have had atleast 3 generous servings of the prawn and fish curries, an entire plate of rice each and we even tried the Risotto from the live counter. A tad bland it was, not the biggest fan of Risotto, yet with a little bit of Tabasco sauce it was quite decent. The desserts were also limited, Gulab Jamum with Rabdi and chocolate ice cream. Simple yet elegant. Piping hot gulab jamuns with ice cream in this gloomy weather is always a win and this time was no different. All in all, for a little over 350 bucks, we had eaten an incredible amount of food and we were rather happy about it.
A word of caution though, try and hit this buffet a little early, the Prawn Curry is bloody amazing but they also stop refilling the dish after about 10.30 pm. The buffet shuts at 11pm, they have a decent bar too with Happy Hours from 3.30 to 9.30 pm. Not too over priced with a pint of beer at about 135 bucks. That along with some delicious Prawn/Fish Curry is just the kind of way you want to spend your evening after a day of doing nothing but watch the bombay rains from your window. Like I said, #FirstQuarterBuffetMadness won't end till this month's end, a fitting way to go off to different locales and cuisines.......I shall not reveal too much for now is not the time. More to follow guys! Peace!
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Let me start with the Rolling Stones. Arguably one of Britian's finest and biggest commercial successes after the Beatles, the Stones rose to fame largely thanks to their leads Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. Despite popular opinion I am quite reserved when it comes to labeling them as the greatest ever British rock acts of the previous century. I love Mick Jagger for everything that he is and I think Rolling Stones would not have sold half of their records if it wasn't for him, but in many ways The Rolling Stones are just another one of your everyday rock and roll band. They made the most of the resources available and yes they did have some great music, but overall I'd say Rolling Stones would not even feature in my Top 5 even Top 10 british rock groups. I'm a Beatles man thru and thru and after hearing the entire discography of the Beatles, you'd find the Stones shockingly repetitive. Even more so some of their songs are direct covers/copies of Beatles' originals like "I Wanna Be Your Man". The math is simple really, The Beatles made 15 albums, the Stones however made twice as many albums and possibly twice as much money from those albums. Commercial success is one thing, but as you might have noticed I don't care much for that, hell to this day my favorite band is Survivor and they barely sold like 1/100th of what the Rolling Stones did. I don't want to be too critical of Mick Jagger and the Stones, they do have somethings going for them. They gave blues rock and the whole idea of Rock & Roll a whole new meaning with all their music, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger immortalized themselves and forever cemented their status as true rockers alongside the likes of Jim Morrison, Freddie Mercury etc. I mean Keith Richards is one crazy englishman, he's the guy who snorted his own father's ashes - talk about being hardcore. I can't even think of a word to describe that. In this day and age, nobody, not even the biggest Rolling Stones fan would have the patience to sit and go thru 29 studio albums and god knows how many more singles and live albums. I don't care how many albums went #1 and platinum according to Wikipedia, in my book the Rolling Stones are just a decent band and the two CD set of their greatest hits is more than enough to enjoy their music. 40 of their greatest hits aptly called "Rolled Gold Plus" starts off with a bang, CD1 is arguably the better of the two CD's, with their popular songs like "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", "Its All Over Now", "Carol", "Paint it Black", "Lady Jane" and my personal favorite "Mother's Little Helper". CD2 becomes a drag really with the really good songs few and far between with the best one being "You Can't Always Get What You Want" closely followed by "Ruby Tuesday". The former however became such a favorite purely because of that season 4 finale of Californication when Hank Moody drives away into the sunset, that brings out the true meaning of this song. All in all I'd listen to this band once in a while, very rarely, its the kind of band you wouldn't mind hearing if it popped up on Shuffle but you wouldn't yearn for it on a regular basis.
In many ways the same can be said about the Buffet I went to last night. Keys Hotel near Military Road, Marol. Not the 5 star luxury I was used to, but sometimes when the need for meat is on a daily basis, you gotta exhaust all available options. For 299+ tax, this buffet doesn't disappoint. Lunch and Dinner cost the same, the location isn't great but you could visit here once in a while. Not the kinda place you'd want to go with family (guests especially). To be frank this place is nothing more than a 3 star hotel with a good buffet. Sadly their ad's say they have over 40 dishes but what they fail to tell you is that of these 40 only about 6 of them are non vegetarian. Over the past few months I've had a lot of buffets, most of them have had an insane spread - so many different kinds of meat to chose from, I would always have to have little little of everything because they all were equally good. Well this buffet was different. There were only 4 items worth paying for, the Prawn Curry, the Malabar Fish Curry, the Chicken Tandoori and Green Peas Pulao. 5 very very hungry guys entered this place and went to town on these items, each one of us took 3 huge helpings of the above. We didn't even bother wasting our time on the Veg side, and mind you they had quite a decent spread for you veggies - about 4 different main course dishes, biryani, pulao, and a couple of Chinese dishes too. That being said I've come a long way from that boy who used to get only Idli Molgapudi in his school tiffin box. I'd rather eat 2 insane non veg dishes than eat 20 good veg dishes. I will eat Chicken Tandoori anywhere in this country, you can't possibly mess it up, its one of the basic starters in Non Veg cuisine and like expected it did not disappoint. Seafood is usually my Achilles heal mainly because of the fact that I am not too used to the anatomy of a fish/lobster etc. That's why I only prefer prawns as they are so easy to eat. However the Malabar Fish Curry here was out of the world, luckily for me it was boneless so I had no mental block whatsoever and thoroughly enjoyed it with the pulao. But without a doubt the Prawn Curry had to take the cake. Easily the best prawn curry I've had in my life, it may not have been the richest or the best in terms of quality, or maybe it was the fact that I was just very hungry, but never have I enjoyed Prawns this much as I did at Keys Hotel Marol. Simply devine I tell you. This was one such buffet were we went for quantity over quality. We each must have had atleast 3 generous servings of the prawn and fish curries, an entire plate of rice each and we even tried the Risotto from the live counter. A tad bland it was, not the biggest fan of Risotto, yet with a little bit of Tabasco sauce it was quite decent. The desserts were also limited, Gulab Jamum with Rabdi and chocolate ice cream. Simple yet elegant. Piping hot gulab jamuns with ice cream in this gloomy weather is always a win and this time was no different. All in all, for a little over 350 bucks, we had eaten an incredible amount of food and we were rather happy about it.
A word of caution though, try and hit this buffet a little early, the Prawn Curry is bloody amazing but they also stop refilling the dish after about 10.30 pm. The buffet shuts at 11pm, they have a decent bar too with Happy Hours from 3.30 to 9.30 pm. Not too over priced with a pint of beer at about 135 bucks. That along with some delicious Prawn/Fish Curry is just the kind of way you want to spend your evening after a day of doing nothing but watch the bombay rains from your window. Like I said, #FirstQuarterBuffetMadness won't end till this month's end, a fitting way to go off to different locales and cuisines.......I shall not reveal too much for now is not the time. More to follow guys! Peace!
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