11 East Street Bar, Ishanya Mall, Pune

Restaurant Name: 11 East Street Bar
Location: Arcade 6, Opposite Golf Course, Ishanya Mall, Yerawada, Pune
Buzz: +91-20-30189969
Contact Person: Joravar Sachdev (Owner)

Ishanya Mall not a very long time ago was a destination only for buying furniture and home décor products. Zora was one of the first restaurants that opened at Ishanya Mall when probably nobody would have thought that it will become one of the most sort after destinations for food and drinks as it is today.

In the recent months many good restaurants, some of which are even from big hospitality brands have sprung up at Ishanya. It was no surprise when the man who had envisioned this a long time ago when he opened Zora – Joravar Sachdev who also also owns the legendary 11 East Street Café at East Street, Pune  launched the 11 East Street Bar in the same premises as Zora.

While most of the bars here are loud on music and indoors cramped for space, 11 East Street Bar has a spacious outdoor seating with music levels that is comfortable enough to have conversations.

The Food Prowl Team was invited by Joravar Sachdev for a food tasting at the 11 East Street Bar.

The bar menu has enough options to opt from, you can order pegs, quarters or full bottles making the economies of scale work in your favor. They also have offers going on where they sell selected drinks by bottle on MRP pricing. Do check about these offers while ordering. Regular cocktails and special Indian inspired cocktails are priced at Rs. 199/- and the specials that are more potent are priced at Rs.349/-. Sangria is also priced at Rs.199/-.

We tried many cocktails, mostly the unique ones at this bar. Aam Panna Mojito served with slices of kairi and Why So Santra with rum and spiced orange were clear favorites.

Indian LIIT, the Indianized variation of LIIT made with coconut water is also a good potent sublime option.

If you prefer Rum based drinks Taste the Thunder would impress you, with Thums Up, hint of Chaat Masala and mint, it’s a dark drink that you’ll like. Sangria’s were made well too.

To go along with the drinks, keeping the 11 ESC spirit of fusion food intact there are a lot of dishes on the menu that will intrigue and amaze you at the same time. Majority of the menu is around bar favorites finger foods and nibbles. Food menu pricing starts from Rs.95/-, you read that correctly! and majority of dishes are in range of Rs.200/- – Rs.300/-. Mains are plated meals with rice or breads included on the side.

As we guzzled the drinks we gobbled the delicious food. Starting with the Chilli Chicken, while it’s a very common and most ordered Chindian dish, 11 ESB have taken it to another level, one of the best I must say, the flavors were spot on, chicken was slightly crisp coated and juicy on the inside, fantastic!

Then came the contrasting Mutton Galauti Kababs, delicate and subtly flavored very close to the famous Lucknowi ones.

The menu has 3 options of pavs with generous fillings, we tried Shammi Kebab Pav and Chatpata Aloo Tikki Pav. They were served with chutney and loaded with fried onions. 4 Pavs for Rs.160/- is a steal.

They have 3 types of Chicken Lollypops to choose from – Regular, Schezwan and Kolhapuri Masala. We opted for the Kolhapuri Masala Lollypops, this is a good fusion of dishes, spicy masala tossed lollypops, if you like your Kolhapuri masala very fiery just let them know while ordering.

Amritsari Fish Fingers with Red Chilli Tartare were also decent, don’t forget to dunk the fish into the tartare sauce on the side to enhance the flavors.

We seldom try salads but experience with salads at 11 ESC has been good and continues to be same here, the Chicken Asian Crunchy Salad, has all the right textures and punchy flavors to make a salad glamorous.

From veggie side of the menu the Creamy Mushroom and Onion Toast was very interesting, not sure to call it an open sandwich or a bread pizza, whatever you want to call it, its yummy!

Cheese Dunked Mushrooms were also very good, the roasted sesame seeds lent them a much-needed flavor complexity.

The Veg show stopper was the Fiery Crispy Veg, as crispy as it could be and little fierier and it would have gone overboard, so they managed to give it palatable fieriness.

The Drunk Chilli Jalapeno Cheese Balls with Beer Sauce, famous at 11ESC are also on this menu and are good as always.

From all the bar snacks to the mains and the first dish to be mentioned must be the Chicken Tikka Masala with Butter Naan which is one of best Chicken Tikka Masala’s you can have in Pune. Period. The right texture, right flavors, and big chicken tikka chunks, it must be ordered every time you eat here.

The Bhut Jholokia Khow Suey was equally good, all the goodness of Khow Suey loaded with fried onions, garlic, peanuts and more with generous drizzle of lemon juice and the fusion spiciness coming from Bhut Jholokia, everything coming together gorgeously.

Fusion continued to the humblest dish of any Indian kitchen – Khichadi, in form of Peri Peri Dal Khichadi with tadka of spicy Peri Peri and has a chicken option as well.

The only dish which can be done slightly better is the Butter Chicken with Egg Fried Rice, while both these components tasted good individually, they didn’t work out as expected when had together.

It was time for desserts and this is one of the strong points for 11 ESC in the past 12 years of their existence and that continues at 11 ESB.

We tried 3 desserts and all of them were really droolicious. Chocolate Vodka Lava, a lava cake infused with enough vodka served with vanilla ice cream. Sticky Toffee Pudding and the Nutella Bread & Butter Pudding were also very good, only if you don’t like lot of banana in your desserts skip the bread butter pudding, if you do order it for sure.

We also received a jar of Jack Daniels Chocolate Fudge prepared in house to carry home. This was absolutely fantastic!

11 East Street Bar sets very high standards for food and service. Its a cool hang out for college goers and working professionals and what more can you ask for even the pricing is reasonable.

11 East Street Bar, Ishanya Mall, Pune | Food Prowl – The Hunger Stories