Sizzle Festival At The Hard Rock Cafe Pune

I am a big fan of sizzlers and was delighted to hit up Hard Rock Cafe’s Sizzle festival that features an array of vegetarian and non-vegetarian sizzlers, cocktails and live band performances. This month long celebration is on at Hard Rock Cafes across India, offering a spread of delectable sizzlers along with bespoke cocktails to complement the food. I just visited Hard Rock Cafe Pune and tried a couple of sizzlers and lots of different delicious drinks.

Since it was ladies night, they had a selection of special Absolut vodka based cocktails for women and I tried a couple of them. The first drink I went for was a Dry Martini, that was nice and stiff and stirred to perfection. 

I started my meal with the Smoked Chipotle Pepper, Lime and Tequila Prawns which consisted of marinated grilled prawns on a bed of fajita vegetables, cheesy mashed potatoes topped with pico de gallo, served with a chilli cilantro sauce and garlic butter rice. The prawns were tender and fresh and went perfectly with the fresh and tangy flavors of the Pico de gallo, which is a fresh salad made from chopped tomato, onion, cilantro, and key lime juice. I also really liked the cheesy mashed potatoes that were really creamy and generously infused with cheese. Potato and cheese! What's not to love? (My dreams of being skinny are shattered once again!)

I was in an experimental mood, so I tried a fruity cocktail called the Metropolitan, which is a lot like a cosmopolitan, but uses Absolut Kurrant Vodka, which is one of my personal favorites. This one tasted just as good as it looked! 

Next up, we were in the mood for some meat so we had the Grilled steak with red wine and mushroom pepper sauce that features medallions of fillet Mignon Steak over exotic vegetables and barbeque onions, served with Merlot infused mushroom pepper Sauce, cheesy mashed potatoes and crispy potato wedges. The pepper sauce was really unique and had a very rustic smoky taste to it and well went with the roasted steak bits that were absolutely heavenly.  

I wasn't quite done drinking yet and moved on to the specially crafted Bacardi cocktails exclusively available during the sizzler festival. I chose the Great Eastern Daiquiri, an interesting drink that combines Bacardi with mangoes and also has savory notes of red chilli! I'm not very fond of sweet girly drinks, so I requested the bartender to make this one extra spicy. The contrasting flavors of sweet mango juice and fiery hot red chilli was a very nice one!

Keeping up with my monstrous appetite, I also tried the Oriental seafood delight which had assorted seafood stir fried in a tangy sambal olek sauce served on oriental vegetables served with noodles and cripsy nacho straws. The was probably the only disappointment of the lot. The seafood felt overcooked so it had become rubbery and chewy and we had a hard time figuring out whether we were eating prawns, squid, fish or chicken. However, the chef did apologize for the same and offered to make it again, but we were too full to eat more. 

The staff at Hard Rock Cafe ensured that we had a great time over good food and great drinks so I totally recommend you to go hit Hard Rock Cafe in your city and try out the Sizzle Festival which is on till the 20th of March!