B4 - Beer, BBQ, Banda & Bandido at QBA, the Westin KL

A few months ago, out of the blue and for no obvious reason, I was somehow invited by Westin's F&B Team to attend B4 - Beer, BBQ, Banda & Bandido (last two are Band and Buffet) at QBA at the Westin KL. Nice perks eh? Except that being a n00b|3 blogger, I kind of ... didn't check my comments ... and sort of ... missed the invite. Haha. So no choice lor, have to pay.

Luckily, managed to get my hands on a free B4 voucher for one, so effectively have half price :)


QBA is a very nicely decorated place. It's a bar-cum-restaurant-cum-cigar bar. The entrance areas house a bar ...


... and the lounging/relaxing area for enjoying cigars and whiskey. Not that I'd know anything about either of those two things :P


Anyway the entire concept of B4 revolves around a few things: unlimited beer, cocktails and other drinks, food, BBQ - and music (a live band takes turns with a DJ spinning salsa music). We start off with a couple of Bandido's - frozen margaritas.


I don't know the proper names for any of these, so I'll just stick to English :) Anyway, we're served with some cold seafood starters on a bed of ice - prawns, crabs, mussels and oysters. They're very very fresh, and a perfect start to the evening. Love the presentation, too.


Having polished it off, our first 'main meal' stop is at the uh ... grilled uh ... tapas area:


Background: the Grilled prawns were nice, and very fresh.
Foreground: Grilled squid on tomatoes (nice), Grilled salmon on some sort of pancake (not so nice, the pancake was quite tasteless and salmon wasn't flavored strongly enough to compensate), and Olives on Grilled goat cheese (nice, if a tad bit too salty).


We then spot a huge plate of Spanish paella - it's a rice dish with lots of seafood - again, mussels, prawns and squid.


The paella was superb - kind of wish we had taken more. The side dishes were pretty good too - there was some sort of bean mash, beef mash (kind of like chili), and some lamb. Skip that biscuit/cracker looking thing in the back though, it's tasteless, dry, and hard.


We were quite amused by the size of this sub/sandwich. Didn't try, though.


Next up: the tortilla counter - made to order. I have chorizo sausage only - the darling has chorizo and chicken combination.


Delicious and juicy. Turns out to be a bit spicy though, so I end up more or less eating both (darling can't really take anything chili :P)


Corn-cakes corner. There are 4 different types of fillings for the corn cakes.


Sadly I can't quite remember what we had. One was bean and beef mash, I think the other was chicken and egg. The fillings were delicious, but I'm not so sure of the cakes - they were a bit hard, and had a pretty strong 'burnt' taste.


Centerpiece must of course, be the BBQ. Plenty of assortments of chicken, beef, lamb and fish - choose whatever tickles your fancy ...


... and hand it over to the chef manning the BBQ pit - he'll grill it perfectly and send it to your table.


The resulting grilled fish. The grilling was done pretty well, actually, but the fish was ... well, I'm not sure what fish that was, but it had a very strong 'fishy' smell/taste.


Grilled lamb sausage and egg combination. Sausage was delicious. Eggs were ... eggs ... haha.


By this point we're mucho stuffed but no choice, have to make room for dessert (no choice cos the waiters bring the desserts to your table once you're done). The 3 things were something like macarons - chocolate sauce sandwiched in light and fluffy pastry-like ... buns. In the foreground, these aren't popiah but instead something like rolled-up crepes - all delicious.


Snow fritter (tastes somewhat like a more fluffy & light donut), and chocolate mousse with cream. Also delicious.


And finally the last dish of the night - popsicles to refresh the palette. Couldn't decipher what flavour these were, probably some tropical fruit mix. I think there was some orange and some passion fruit, among others. Check out the presentation!


Wanted to stay to salsa a bit, but nobody else was dancing so a bit paiseh. That, and the darling didn't have the right shoes for salsa, so home we go!

Overall, I rate the experience decently high. The food is a mixed bag - some items were outstanding, some below average. But the experience (other than basically being seated next to a noisy road) is top-notch. I'd say the real complication comes from the price - it's about MYR170.00 per person after taxes and service charges. Is it worth it? If you drink, then yes, otherwise ... it can be a bit steep if you're paying full price

B4 is on every Saturday night at QBA, the Westin KL. Head on over to their website to make bookings or for more information!