Pune Diary

I spent a month in Pune recently after a very long time, since i left the city in 2010, and am startled at how much the city has changed.

I first came to Pune in 2006 to pursue college studies and it was a very different city then: i was struck by how quiet and slow-paced life in this city was. The weather was never hot and never cold, it was just quite too cool!

The city was called 'oxford of the east' and students patronised the restaurants and dominated the city night life largely, to the extent that most eateries and clubs would go out of business in march-april every year when students would leave for home for their vacation.

The restaurants were largely inexpensive then. Breakfast at the iconic Vohuman Cafe meant bun maska and cheese omelette; Goodluck Cafe, a cult Pune establishment, was the go-to place for keema pav and milky irani chai; spicy Bombay biryani at George's; mild Irani biryani at Blue Nile; chicken sizzlers at Zamu's; the popular Vaishali for sev puri and dahi puri. And so much more.

And there were the upmarket restaurants: at Malaka Spice, the thai curries were as excellent as were the mee goreng and mee siam noodles. At Arthur's Theme, we relished salmon in lemon butter sauce and never missed out on tiramisu and suzette crepes. And All Stir Fry at the Gordon House Hotel was the only decent Chinese option in town.

There weren't that many premier hotels then as there are today, but there were fancy places: Stone Water Grill, La Dolce Vita, Toscana etc.

As the city began to transform on the back of IT outsourcing and industrial progress, several new deluxe hotels had opened at various price points. A glitzy JW Marriott had opened at the heart of the city. There was Hyatt which opened two properties on nagar highway near the airport. The old Le Meridien became Sheraton. And a Conrad opened near to it.

So i went back to some of the old places to see how things had changed.

The first place i went to was the legendary Goodluck Cafe at Deccan Gymkhana area. This is sort of the old Irani cafes where you get all-day-breakfast along with usual restaurant dishes they make for lunch and dinners. The place is as buzzing and as packed out as i last remembered it, with its withered walls, narrow isles and cramped tables. It's terribly nostalgic and am down memory lane as i savour bun maska and keema pav and mop up mutton junglee, a greenish semi-dry dish, with soft roomali rotis.

Vohuman Cafe is now a swanky two-storey place which had opened opposite to where it originally stood for decades. The morning i went to, it seemed the place has retained its student vibe as much as its classic double cheese omelette and bun maska.

That very evening i went to the legendary George restaurant at Pune camp. I had to wait for a good 20 mins before i could get a table, which says a lot about its unfailing popularity amongst the locals. The biryani was robust, pungent and masala packed, very much the same stuff you get at Jaffer Bhai's in Bombay and the joojeh kebab was less successful. To be honest, the place would suffer in comparison, but in the city context, you can still have a hearty meal of a plate of robust biryani and some kebabs.

And i went to Mahesh Lunch Home, a coastal seafood restaurant i patronised during my college years. Long before i discovered Gajalee and Trishna after moving in to Bombay, it was here i was exposed to coastal Malvani dishes. It is now a big chain with restaurants all over Bombay, Pune, Bangalore and abroad. It's not inexpensive but a pricey affair, so in college years i would save up handsomely to allow myself a treat once in every three months. I would go to the Pune camp outlet with whoever was in for a splurge, and gorge on bombil fry, surmai tawa fry, pomfret tandoori, butter garlic crab, mutton sukka and what not.

So i am glad the meal this time was as good as i remembered it. I had an excellent Crab in butter garlic sauce which they are popular for, a wonderful Pomfret tandoori which was moist and flavourful with a bit tartness of the masala and a nice Prawn gassi i mopped up with neer dosas.

Satisfied, i went looking for the other elements of Pune food.

Kolhapuri mutton thalis have become huge in Pune to the extent of ubiquity. Several restaurants of all size and scale have opened up all over the city serving fiery kolhapuri mutton. My memories of kolhapuri mutton thalis again goes back to my college years when i would turn up often at such places as Gavkari, Purepur Kolhapur for the spice hit that made you to go back for more. A standard thali has a mutton rassa/sukka, a keema, two chapatis/bhakris and rice along with pandhra rassa and tambda rassa (which are basically broths, makes for a nourishing start).

I went for lunch to Maratha Samrat at Pune camp where i had the kolhapuri mutton thali on my last day trip to the city and found it amazing. The thali here is sumptuous and it comes with a mutton masala fry along with the mutton curry and keema. I loved the freshness of the coconut-based masala that the meat in this hearty curry has soaked in. The mutton fry was excellent, had layers of spice that has been cooked to perfection. And the tambda rassa was so delectable that i ended up having three bowls of it.

That set me asking for more as i made up my mind for another kolhapuri thali lunch the next day at Surve's on ferguson college road, which is really popular these days in Pune. I loved the sign board which read "Surve's- Pure Non Veg" which says how much they take their meat seriously. The thali here had mutton sukka and a soupy mutton curry along with the other staple accompaniments- keema, bhakris and rice. The mutton sukka was overwhelmed with the coconut base of the masala, a less successful dish. The keema was spicy but nicely balanced out by the sweetness of the caramelised onions. And the star item of the thali was the soupy mutton rassa which was packed with flavours, which multiplied manifold when mopped up by the bhakris.

So, the city has well representation of Malvani and Kolhapuri- two distinctly great cuisines of Maharashtra.

Pune is perfectly adequate but there's nothing spectacularly good - at least, not in my experience.

[REPOST from 2016]