Five star hotels, fine dining restaurants and cafes in the city, known to be food lover's paradise, plan to ring in 2017 with a lavish spread as they don't see demonetisation affecting New Year revelries.
"We did not face any cancellation of bookings or dip in turnout at our Christmas brunch at Smoke Shack. So, we are confident that demonetisation has not affected us. Being a big establishment, we have not slashed our usual New Year's eve menu," Anukam Tiwary of Park Plaza told PTI.
The New Year eve buffet at the hotel's restaurants range from chicken consomme with Gorgonzola quenelle, mustard marinated peppered bekti, shredded chicken and green bean salad with white wine vinaigrette, crispy lamb and bean sprout salad with Thai chilli sauce to traditional New Year season English meals like English ham slice and Awadhi-Mughali dishes.
In Park Pavilion besides the usual chicken biryani and dum ka gosht, there will be rosemary turkey and white garlic fish in the non-vegetarian segment on offer.
"We have not been hit by any currency crunch. After all people can transact with different modes of payment. The Christmas-New Year time is the biggest period of festivity in hospitality industry here and everyone wants to be part of the celebrations - more after 50 days of demonetisation," its executive chef said.
The city's new social media themed popular hang-out cafe What's Up will have a-la-carte menu of turkey specials like roasted turkey stuffed in panini with BBQ sauce, turkey Irani kebab, Turkey seekh kebab and Turkey pepperoni pizza in the starter section.
The main course comprises roasted turkey with cranberry sauce served with saute vegetables and potato and turkey a la king (turkey cooked in rich creamy sauce and herb rice).
The cafe owner said the economy priced buffets might have faced a little crunch at the outset but picked up from mid-December.
At JW Kitchen of Kolkata's brand new JW Marriott, the 22
course lavish buffet spread includes roast turkey in cranberry sauce, barbecued lamb chops, kung pao prawn, lamb stew, pork vindaloo, Anglo Indian soups and assorted desserts with unlimited drinks and a lot more, a hotel spokesperson said suggesting demonetisation did not dampen the festivities.
In the heritage Lalit Great Eastern Kolkata, which has a sizeable number of loyal customers, orange muffins, Christmas stolen bread, ginger bread were among the assorted items on offer besides the signature dim puff and plum pudding, a spokesperson said.
At the city's fine dining restaurant Red Hot Chilli Pepper, the note ban had initially caused a dip. "But there are encouraging signs of the buzz returning since mid-December which picked up from Christmas week," a chef said.
"We are not backing out from introducing new signature dishes like kung pao mushroom, mandarin sliced chicken and roast chilli pork, tsing tu bhetki, stir-fried duck, kung pao mushroom to name a few from hundreds of Christmas-New Year delicacies. The crowd is back," executive Director Namrata Borthakar said.
