Where you should have your next party

Recently I had a milestone birthday celebration, which was held at Suraj Restaurant in Redwood City, on El Camino near Woodside Road. They put on a terrific spread - everything was wonderful. Here's how it works.

First, you need to plan on at least 50 people to get his banquet room. It is a really nice room, too; it accommodated 80 with no problem. If we wanted to have dancing then, well, let's just say that not everyone could dance at the same time in there.

If you have more like 50 people, they can put the buffet inside the room, but if you have a lot more (which we did), it's just outside the double door.

Anyway, the boss suggests a menu - appetizers, salad, entrees, and mango ice cream. Soft drinks and coffee are included in the price. I wanted to tweak the menu; the result is below.

There were appetizers - some kind of chicken, and mixed vegetable pakoras. For the main part of the meal, there was salad (iceberg lettuce), naan bread, rice, navrattan korma, dahl curry, saag paneer, I think another chicken curry, lamb vindaloo, cucumber raita. Mango ice cream was brought to the tables afterward.

We brought a cake and they provided a cake server, paper plates, and plastic forks.

At one point, I started introducing the groups of people to each other (standing on a chair), and the manager brought a microphone to me with a long cord. That was a freebie. One of my friends noticed a complete entertainment system. Sure enough, when I asked to use the CD changer, he said that was fine. So the accompaniment CD for Jenny's song and the dance CDs for Sheri's dances were played through his stereo system. Very nice.

I noticed a DVD player, a projector, and a screen, too. He might charge extra for those, but anyway there they are.

Speaking of charge, how much was it? The bar bill was about $140 (guests had to walk from the banquet room to the bar). About 85 said they'd come, a few sent late regrets, and a few just didn't show. I told the restauranteur 80 so that's what they charged me for: $20 a head including the use of the room from for four hours. Total bill: Under $1750. Terrific food, great facilities, friendly service, and it didn't cost an arm and a leg.