New Town golfers who were deprived of a bite and a steaming cup after a round or two on the greens all these months can now sit back and order. The cafe that had stayed shut has re-opened with a new name, menu and management.
Club de Golf opened on the ground floor of the two-storeyed structure next to the six-hole patch at Gate 6 of Eco Park. The 32-seater is open from 6.30am to 10.30pm and will serve Continental and Oriental dishes not just golfers but also general visitors.
“All these weeks ever since Eco Park re-opened, we have let only members come and play. But recently we received a request from a wing of the paramilitary forces to let their officers use the arena. So we decided to resume the pay-and-play facility for all non-members,” said NKDA chairman Debashis Sen.
The golf links draw footfall in two batches — at 6am and at 4pm. In between, training is offered to aspirants in driving, putting and chipping. “We have about 50 trainees currently in both our courses combined — a three-month basic course and another three months on the course. We also have about 60 members of whom around 20 are regulars,” said Rajarshi Gupta, manager, Eco Park Golf Arena.
Other than soups, salads, momos and sandwiches, there are American and Continental breakfast combinations on offer. But the biggest pull, the organisers think, will be the brinner, to be served from breakfast time to dinner time. The two non-vegetarian and vegetarian brinner platters, costing Rs 367 and Rs 262 respectively, offer a combination of hash brown potatoes, egg, sausage, toast, baked beans, sauteed vegetables etc along with tea, coffee and fruit juice.
Club de Golf was forced into serving lunch to guests on Sunday even before the inauguration took place in the evening. “The kitchen was open from the morning and was serving only coffee and omelette to members. But at lunchtime, visitors from Eco Park came all the way to this gate and requested us to serve food. All the other eateries, they said, had long queues and they had children with them. So our staff had to rustle up something,” said Akanksha Pandey, a resident of NBCC Vibgyor who is a part of the all-woman trinity behind the venture along with Shravasti Mukherjee and Romita Sinha. The Eco Park footfall had crossed 7,000 that day for the first time after it re-opened.