Café Rio: Dhaka's popular buffet-only restaurant

Dhaka has only a very few restaurants which are buffet-only. Most of the restaurants are a huge blend of snacks-n-coffee-meals. Café Rio, when opened a few years back in the capital, serves only buffets both for lunch and dinner.

Their buffet offers more than a hundred items, ranging from rice staples to seafood to savory mains, and, of course, desserts and drinks. The meal spread is segmented into appetizers, soups, main dishes, and desserts.

Vegetable pakora, wontons, tempuras are the popular appetizers. For soups, one can opt for traditional Thai clear seafood or chicken corn. Traditional mutton dishes include mutton biriyani and mutton rezala, coupled with popular beef handi and beef dalgosht, among others. There is an array of fish-based dishes too. Loitta, mackerel, and prawn are a few of those. while crab-oyster-n-pomfret is another popular seafood item.

Staples like rice are served in many different preparations-like fried rice, pulao, steamed rice etc. Chicken, the must-have of any menu, comes in a variety of kebab, kabsa, and masala preparation. For the traditional desi menu, Café Rio has a spread of bhortas like kalojeera, fish, borboti, egg, tomato etc. These can be paired with steamed rice.

A variety of sauce and condiments is a part of the menu which enhances the taste and texture. Almost two dozen types of salads are served-Russian/Coleslaw/Korean/M-alaysian Vermicelli/Chana/ Beef/Greek-are a few of the popular ones.

Apart from these, there are also momos, sandwiches, pastas, and spaghettis. Dessert includes unlimited ice cream offers coupled with tasty treats like nrownie, mousse, panna cotta, churros, and our very famous traditional gurer payesh and misthi doi.

Café Rio has three outlets-in Gulshan 1 (Jabbar Tower), Dhanmondi Road 10/A and Uttara Sector 7. It is open for lunch (1:00-4:00 pm) and dinner (7:00-10:00 pm). Each outlet has huge premise that can accommodate over 200 guests.

With such a king size menu (serving more than 100 items) and a large premise-Café Rio is one of the desired destinations for both big and small events-which require unlimited food and space.