Punjabi Family Feast Chronicles | Masaledaar By Mini Punjab | Food Review | Food Photography

It was a mildly rainy afternoon when we landed here for a food review invite and were impressed by the spacious, clean, warm and inviting ambiance right away. This has an elegant contemporary feel while retaining the old world charm of those family restaurants everyone wants to go to when celebrating any occasion, or just to have some good hearty meal to satisfy our souls :)

Situated on the first floor of Thane Club, no entry charges whatsoever, there is a beautiful view of swimming pool on one side and even a buffet offering for foodies on the other end. We have realized that traveling to Thane is worth it when we enter places like these, so vast that they can easily accommodate huge wedding parties because it reminds us of severe space crunch in mainland mumbai *facepalm* :D Service is very fast with staff very knowledgeable about food and they give excellent suggestions, so listen to them when in doubt. Menu is quite intensive with focus mostly on North Indian/Punjabi/Mughlai preparations and both veggies and non-veggies have been taken care of. My family is hardcore veggie and we absolutely loved our experience, so that says it all :) Prices are reasonable for quality+ quantity, everything is top notch related.

We started off with a round of Masala Chaas, this has to be the best Chaas we have tried so far. It is served in typical Punjabi jumbo glass, so somebody with a really low appetite, this is your complete meal in itself :D The main thing is, it has quite an amalgamation of Indian spices to soothe the tummy, made us remember the chaas our nani made, my sister tried a strawberry based mocktail which was decent too,

Thereafter, our parents tried Veg Manchow Soup and loved it, had a nice spicy medley of veggies in soya sauce based soup, prominent garlicky hint, nice option on a cold rainy day,

On to starters, we started off with Vol-Au-Vents i.e. Mini Puff stuffed with Mushroom & Cheese grated to perfection, these are an explosion of flavors, right from crunchy puffs to creamy cheese bits, have them while they are hot!

A special mention to Paneer here, we believe they make it in-house because it was sooooo soft, felt like a cloud on our palate :) Loved the creamy Malai Paneer Tikka with the smokey Tandoori flavor, 

Coming to Tandoori flavor, we also loved juicy Tandoori Mushroom stuffed with Minced Capsicum & Cheese, and quite liked Tandoori Aloo stuffed with Paneer & Vegetables -though I personally feel that potatoes go dry in Tandoor, the flavors were spot on though,

Up next was Cheese & Corn Seekh kebab i.e. delicately flavored American Corn & Cheddar Cheese Kebab and it felt like a velvety roll of cheese with corn, easily my personal favorite in the lot, the cheese here actually delighted like grated paneer! Got to try this one folks :)

For main course, we chose happy Dal Tadka, Veg Paneer Lababdar -again melt in mouth softest paneer in dense saffrony gravy, along with Veg Maratha i.e. chopped vegetables rolls simmered in red gravy, all 3 were very good, only mom felt that Veg Maratha had a little bit more salt than needed, the veg rolls were really flavorful though,

On the side we also tried Dahi vada which was again perfected the Punjabi way, my mom had a Punjabi best friend and she reminisced how these dahi vadas were very similar to what she had in her childhood, these vadas are not completely soaked in dahi like we are used to and might seem a bit off to some, tasted good though,

Giving perfect accompaniment to our vast main course gravy items were Roti, Veg Biryani and stuffed Veg Kulcha, each tasting as fresh, as delicious as expected,

Obviously, we had a royal feast and it won't be complete without gorging on some amazing desserts, so we noshed on Gulab Jamun, Moong Dal Halwa and Angoori Rasmalai, again dripping with all the deliciousness one might expect from them. Halwa was my favorite, dripping in ghee the way I wanted it to (and having about 10,000,000 calories but who cares :P) It was with a lot of happiness in our tummy that we left Masaledaar by Mini Punjab and we can't wait to go back for another hearty Punjabi meal & hospitality here :)