This banquet hall is on a second floor of a pretty new-looking Punjabi strip mall. Make sure you…read morelook for "Dhaliwal", because there are a few other halls in the same complex. I came for a wedding reception, which, I would guess, had around 300 guests.
The first impression was of the grandeur of the decor of the hall. White tablecloths and white cloth-covered chairs, chandeliers, waterfall, aquarium, dance floor with funky lights, with small stage next to it.
Then, I went to the washroom. Mall class, not Hotel. There was even a stall with a washer and dryer in it...
Servers were efficient enough, but were wearing casual clothes. It seems that they were at least told to wear something black, but the sound guy was wearing a gray T-shirt with huge lettering on it. I wish they were wearing something more classy. It ruined the mood. That would be enough reason for me not to rent this hall (assuming that they don't just rent out the space).
One of the walls looked like a movable partition. My suspicions were pretty much confirmed, because we kept hearing bass from music that wasn't ours. I think they had a earlier booking, though, since we only heard them the first hour or so.
Cutlery were those ones with edges that look like they were cookie-cutter-ed and forks slightly angled, but it wasn't angled enough to comfortably scoop up the sauce.
The chairs didn't glide on the carpet, so it was hard to get into them.
The MC was under the impression that the buffet food would be ready at 7, but they weren't ready until 8. We were fine because we were filling up on appetizers, but I felt bad for the bride, who seemed to be stressing about it.
The "tea" was what we know as "chai". I like that, but I don't remember any other options such as unsweetened, uncreamed, or coffee. Also, it was only available before or after the kitchen was preparing the actual food.
The food was good -- though I'm no authority on Indian food -- but I was more impressed with the deep-fried appetizer stuff than the buffet. I think a big part of that may have been that I couldn't see what I was getting. I understand the dim lights to set the mood, but the buffet area was darker than our table area, so I couldn't discern what most of them were until I got back to my seat. It would have been nice if each food in the buffet was labeled what it is and how spicy it is. But then, maybe we were a rare group, in that less than half of us were Indian.