Adhi Potoba

Shivaji Market situated a few blocks to the south of Main Street, is the centre for all things meat in Pune and the central wholesale market for meat, poultry and seafood in the city. This is the place you’d go to if you wanted the freshest and the best meats. Most families serious about their non-veg get their meats from here and every family has their favourite vendor who apparently has the ‘best’ meat or fish. Getting is from someone else is tantamount to throwing money down the drain. Shivaji Market is probably one of the smelliest places in the city and not the prettiest of places. It has four major sections—poultry, meat (mostly lamb), fish and vegetable. It is very colourful, full of character (and characters) and a photographers dream. A late uncle of mine had an obsession with buying the freshest meat. The meat trucks delivered the meat around 7:00 p.m. He would go the market around 7:00 and hang out in the smelly gala (stall) with our family butcher. He would then order some...

In my entire time in Pune city, the only place that came close to delivering a delicious mouth-watering sandwich that could rival Marzorin, was Jaws. Anyone who has lived in Pune in the 90s can remember Jaws. If you weren’t a vegetarian, you couldn’t go to Camp without at least considering if there was a possibility of a sandwich at Jaws. Jaws was famous for being the first place in Pune that served a real grilled beef burger. It was run by a couple of fresh graduates in an old British Raj style bungalow that looked like it was once army property. The restaurant wasn’t really part of the bungalow and was situated in the verandah. The seating was on concrete benches haphazardly scattered across the dusty parking area, Western music playing on loudspeakers that clearly couldn’t handle the sound. There was a room with a table tennis table where one could play for a token fee although no one went there to play. It was all about the burgers and the best chicken roll you ever had. Great burg...

On my visit back to Pune, I noticed that Main Street in Camp looks nothing like the one I used to remember. Of course, when I still lived there, it bore no resemblance to the Main Street of when I was a little kid. There were a couple of stores I remember vividly. Toy Center, one would think, as the name suggests would be a Toy Shop. However pestonji logic dictated that the store be half pharmacy, a quarter electrical appliance store with some toys behind the counter. Thus the name. There were the usual Marzorin, Budhani, Wonderland and other Camp staples. One place, however, where they still don’t seem to get with the fact that it is 2008, is Monafood. The weirdly designed restaurant was divided into 3 levels from the street. The outermost served Softee ice cream. The next level in was the juice bar. And the third level in from the street was the actual restaurant. Complete with discoloured Formica tables and waiters who bring you your water in steel glasses with their fingers in it. ...

Whenever we had guests visiting us from out of town they had things they needed to do, places they had to visit and certain things they absolutely had to take back. One of these that came under all three categories was a visit to the Kayani Bakery on East Street in Camp. If you are a visitor to Pune and you return home without a bag containing a Kayani cake, a box of Shrewsbury biscuits and a bag of wine biscuits, it is safe to say you’d be in the doghouse for at least a week. The Kayani bakery has been a Pune landmark since it was established by brothers Hormuz and Khodayar Irani in 1955. The Shrewsbury biscuit, which is Kayani’s flagship product, is quite possibly the most delicious biscuit you will ever eat. Just opening the pink box to reveal the line of biscuits embossed with the KB logo is a near orgasmic experience. But dipping it in tea and eating is like an orgy in your mouth that will definitely take you there. A Kayani product will never fail to put you in a great mood. Aft...

Kaathi Kabab Roll is a relatively new food to Pune and the first time I had discovered it was while interning for an industrial design company way back in 1991. We had just designed a sexy, stand-alone Dollops ice-cream parlour that stood outside the original Chinese room on East Street in Camp. It was a really boring job, having to supervise the labour with little or no contribution from yours truly. Just the way I like it. My then boss asked me if I was hungry and then suggested that we should get a Kathi Kabab roll. I didn’t know what it meant, but anything with the word kabab in it was cool with me. We got onto his cream coloured, fairly dented Bajaj Super with broken indicators and flew past Kayani Bakery to the corner of the block right opposite Victory talkies. A journey that took all of 30 seconds. As a rule, in Pune, walking is not only frowned upon, but ridiculed, too. At the corner of Central Bank stood a rusty, old, overloaded cart that was clearly a traffic violation in nu...

No trip to Pune is complete without a visit to Marzorin . It is situated on Main Street in Camp in a tiny little shop three steps above everyone else. Back in the 80s when I used to frequent Marzorin, they had a very short menu. 4 types of sandwiches. 5 types of drinks and a few pastries here and there. Today, Marzorin is a huge 2 story restaurant with a fairly complex menu. My favourite food at Marzorin is still by far the little triangular chicken sandwich. I have tried every possible combination of chicken, spreads and bread to make it taste like the Marzorin. I have come up with many recipes in the process, but the Marzorin combination still eludes me. Here's one of my favourites. Ingredients 1 cup Grilled Chicken, very finely chopped 8 slices Whole Wheat Bread 1/2 cup Butter 1/4 cup Cream Cheese 1/4 tsp Black Pepper Salt to taste Method Saute grilled chicken with pepper and salt with little oil Whisk cream cheese and butter till they are completely mixed Apply mixture generou...