Panchvati Gaurav - Bhandarkar Road

I visited Panchvati Gaurav last week with my office colleagues. I went there just to celebrate freshness of new year.

Food: There is no fixed menu of the restaurant since it offers only thali. The items in thali consist of two main varieties from regions of Gujarat and Rajasthan. We reached there around 1:15 PM. The restaurant has three branches in Pune and also in other cities like Nagpur, Nasik and Mumbai.

The thali has many varieties of items. The restaurant typically gives you Jaljira as welcome drink. Then after the main course is served. The thali included following items:

• Four types of sabjis: There was one green sabji mostly beans, one paneer and capsicum, one aaloo mutter and one pulses.
• Two types of farsan: Dhokla and Cutlet
• Two types of sweet: Mung Dal halwa and Angoor Rabri
• Roti
• Bajra Roti
• Masala Puri
• Dal (both mitha and tikha)
• Kadhi
• Rice or Veg Pulao
• Papad
• Pickle and Chutney
• Chhachh

You also get saunf/dhana dal at the end of meal as mouth freshner.

Charges: The restaurant charges INR 300 per thali. I found it reasonable compared to paying the same for Domino's Pizza.

The restaurant also offers facility of parcel where Half parcel costs around INR 400 which serves around 3 people if one of them is kid. I typically get half parcel for my family of three with a daughter of 7 years and it serves well. But they give only one with parcel, either dal or kadhi. So I take kadhi and then order extra dal to get both as part of my meal.

Chilli's - Phoenix Market City

I visited Chilli's restaurant in Phoenix Market City this week with one of my apartment neighbours. We also planned to watch movie "Bajirao Mastani" at PVR.

Entertainment: We started from aundh at 1:30 PM and reached Phoenix market city at around 2:15 PM. The movie started at around 2:30 PM and lasted till 5:45 PM. When we came out, the kids insisted on going to Fun City at the mall and enjoy the rides there.


There was a train too and kids boarded and took a round around the mall. There were rides in fun city including electric cars and some video games too. You have to take a INR 500 fun city card and then swipe it in different rides and games.

Food: We went to Chilli's restaurant whose menu is available here. We went for "Tripple Dipper" vegetarian starter where we got following three items:

• Fried Paneer Quesadilla Bites
• Texas Cheese Poppers
• Southwestern Rolls

This was a good starter and we liked it a lot so we ordered one more. For main course, we ordered following:

• Cilantro Pesto Pasta
• Cajun Pasta (upgraded to Shareable portion)
• Vegetarian Fajita
• One Mocktail

Charges: The total bill for all the above came to around INR 3440 which was a bit on higher side but we had already looked at the pricing before we went in. The food was good but not value for money.

Shahji's Paratha House - Apte Road

I took my new year lunch at Shahji's Parantha House, apte road in Pune. We went there to celebrate eating out in the new year of 2016.

Food: The menu of the restaurant is available here. The restaurant offers wide array of Paranthas which are served with chhole, veg salad, raita and dal makhani.

We ordered "Amritsari Naan" which is not listed on menu probably because it is the most famous of all dishes served at the restaurant. The second one we ordered were Paneer Parantha. We also ordered chhachh and gulab jamun. The two dishes were enough to fill stomach of three of us. 

Charges: The total bill came to around INR 698 which was reasonable considering the quality and quantity of food.