Sun­day afternoon.

They call it a brunch but things start cook­ing up only after 1 pm. The place gets mighty crowded and a large pop­u­la­tion of Bangalore’s expat crowd con­verges here so be pre­pared to feel like you’re in another coun­try or something.

Other than that, I couldn’t find much wrong with the Leela brunch @ the Cit­rus last Sun­day. Firstly, I had to think twice before squan­der­ing 1000 odd bucks on a lunch, but I ratio­nal­ized say­ing that I would prob­a­bly do it just once in a blue moon. And this was the blue moon, I decided. A friend actu­ally owes me a treat at the Leela since donkey’s years (and I think one should hon­our a treat is what I think, but not every­one thinks alike :). But that was not forth­com­ing I realised after wait­ing for a year (I’m mighty patient that way!), so I decided that this was it. Now or nev­er… Sec­ondly, I needed all the good food and wine I could lay my hands on. It does great things to my spirit.

So there we were, a mot­ley group of four and one small kid who kept run­ning off now and then, wait­ing impa­tiently to start off on our gigan­tic meal. They start pour­ing the sparkling wine almost as you take your seat. We began with the appe­tiz­ers sec­tion and I must say that I have yet to see a larger vari­ety of meat in front of me (except prob­a­bly at a meat mar­ket, where it doesn’t look half as good). Every time, I think of giv­ing up plea­sures of the flesh, this is what hap­pens : temp­ta­tion! We tried every­thing : squid, lamb, chicken, egg and even sushi (which I didn’t quite like). After that, we went back again for a sec­ond helping.

By the end of the sec­ond round, there was no place for the main course. So we decided that we’d try out the deli­cious vari­eties of cheese and bread they have on offer. Cheese is some­thing I can live with­out, but I must admit that what­ever I tried was delicious.

I was into my fifth glass of sparkling wine, when I realised that I was begin­ning to feel a lit­tle wooly headed. The desserts sec­tion looked extremely appe­tiz­ing and the greedy Ms Aquadreamer took every­thing on her plate (till her plate actu­ally looked like the dessert sec­tion itself) and ate mighty lit­tle of it when she sud­denly realised she was on a diet. Talk about wrong timing :)

Any­way, not hav­ing any such wor­ries myself, I ate and ate and ate till I felt pretty much like the stuffed potato, coated with a layer of creamy may­on­naise : glazed and calorie-filled! There’s only so much a fig­ure con­scious woman of today can eat (well you’d think so), but since I don’t fall in that cat­e­gory, I sur­passed all limits.

Finally, about 2 hours later, I emerged from the Leela into the Ban­ga­lore sun­shine, lighter (in the wal­let), heav­ier (by about 5 kilos) and fuzzy headed. But as they say, one has to return to earth after a while. The long drive back home cured me of my wine-induced hang­over. Aren’t I glad that a blue moon doesn’t hap­pen too often?!