Shekhar Suman at Kala Mandir. Picture by Aranya Sen

Following the huge response to the lunch buffet at Mainland China, the speciality Chinese restaurant has just introduced a dinner buffet on Sundays, targeted at the seafood junkie.

The week-old buffet is already drawing enough guests for the restaurant authorities to consider “extending the dinner buffet over the entire weekend after a while”.

The Emerald and Jade banquets on the ground floor of the restaurant has been converted into a makeshift dining area with 90 covers. The buffet tables two soups, (one vegetarian and one non-vegetarian), followed by four starters with at least two fried items, four veg and non-veg dishes in the main course, two rice and two noodle variations and four desserts with ice cream. A beverage — beer, a glass of wine, or a shot of vodka — also comes with the spread. “Of the non-veg preparations, three will be seafood like crab, shrimp and oyster, while there will be a chicken option for those who are not too fond of seafood,” said manager Debashish Ghosh.

Darsaan with ice-cream, the eternal favourite and a must-have after any meal at the restaurant, and prawn wafers have been included to keep the flavour of a Mainland China buffet intact. “The spread is similar to the lunch buffet that is so popular,” adds Ghosh.

Open from 7.30 pm to 11 pm, the buffet has been priced at Rs 350 plus taxes.

The Mainland China buffet. Picture by Aranya Sen

Funny man

Shekhar Suman is one man who may succeed in making even a brick wall break in two. His witty one-liners and spoofs on personalities and events have kept viewers glued to their TVs for hours. And when he took on a 1,000-strong Calcutta audience live, sure enough, there was not a straight face in sight.

Shekhar was in town for two days for an event organised by Sangeet Kala Mandir, a voluntary cultural organisation. On Saturday evening at Kala Mandir auditorium, on the second day of the show dubbed Shekhar Suman Live, the entertainer held the audience in rapt attention for two hours, mimicking Laloo Prasad Yadav (his favourite subject), ripping Bollywood heroes and directors apart, and mocking the state of politics in India. His take on Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s reaction on hearing about the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal had the hall in splits.