Eating Out: This seafood fest won't make you crabby!

hotel sunbeam, sector 22 chandigarh: maybe it's one of those coincidences, but whenever we go to hotel sunbeam's festivals, it's always when we're really, really hungry, and therefore, the wait seems that much longer. this time too, three empty stomachs growled as we waited for the fare being offered as part of christmas celebrations at the hotel. starting on friday, december 14 and going on till december 31, the seafood festival has a variety of soups: crab and onion, cream of prawns and olive and even squid soup, for those of you willing to give it a try.while the former two soups are priced at rs 60 each, the one with squid is for rs 80. in the snacks section, there are two fish and two prawn dishes. fish tikka and tandoori fish (rs 150 each) and two prawn dishes (rs 250 each). in the main course, we settled for seafood risotto (mixed seafood on a bed of rice served with french fries and mint sauce). however, we opted out of including squid and crab in the seafood and settled for just prawns, maybe that's why the curry tasted a wee bit bland, even sweet to one of us. priced at rs 210, this, along with smoked trout pate (rs 150), tuna with lemon and coriander served with mayonnaise (rs 210), prawns on toast (our second dish), steak of mackerel, fillet pomfret, and fish curry and fish lababdar make the main course menu. the prawns on toast (very tiny prawns) were quite delicious, served along with a tartar sauce and coleslaw. just to be on the safe side (remember our hunger), we also ordered a vegetarian chowmein. for desserts, we settled for fruit cream and ice cream. the fruit cream, quite packed in content, could have been a bit more chilled. though the menu is not very exhaustive, the fare is indeed a fair attempt at trying to keep the city in touch with seafood. add to that the sweet little thermocol cut-outs of mermaids, crabs, fish and lobsters on the wall, and you'll have yourself a rather fishy lunch! just one word of caution - keep plenty of time at hand for a leisurely lunch; the servic is a bit slow. geetika_bhandari@indiatimes.com