Deccan Harvest, Magarpatta City, Pune, India
Food Prowl Team
Restaurant Name: Deccan Harvest
Location: Opposite Tower 1, Off Pune Solapur Road, Magarpatta, Hadapsar, Pune, Maharashtra 411013
Buzz: +91-98220 00348
Deccan Harvest – A place to relax and let your hair down while sipping on cocktails and enjoying sumptuous food with a twist.
Deccan Harvest has been around for long time now and has been a place frequented by people staying and working in Magarpatta as it serves good food and lets you escape traffic snarls.
Recently the Restaurant Management decided to revamp its menu and offerings to include much more interesting items in addition to the regular favorites. Keeping in mind the young patrons from the IT park just across the road, they have hired a profession cocktail academy to completely change the drinks menu that is very vibrant now and delivers very interesting combinations and they have also focused on expanding the menu on the finger foods to go with these lip smacking cocktails, and to say the least they have done a pretty satisfying job.
Food Prowl team was invited to sample the new menus and provide feedback on areas of improvement, and we at the end of it all only had few minor suggestions to make to 2 cocktails. They used in house made spice and floral aromatic sprays on the drinks that added a wonderful dimension and aroma to the drinks.
We started the evening with the most unusual special on the Menu – Whiskey Malai Mar Ke, being a dark breed lover I straight away asked for it and it was a very nice concoction of Whiskey with Irish Cream and topped with a spice mix, perfectly balanced and very unusual flavors, not heavy on the palate as the name suggests, so one can down a few without worrying.
After creamy whiskey it was a sparky spicy mix of Mango & Pepper Mojito, it started with a sweet palate from the mango and ended on pepper spiciness that lingered, if you like pepper this should be your pick and you can ask for level of pepper to be increased.
To cut down the pepper taste we were served Rose Petal & Litchi Martini which was a vodka lime martini with litchi flavor and hint of rose flavor and aroma, had soothing delicate flavor. Cherry Tomato and Cucumber Mojito which had nice flavors but was a little sweet for my taste.
Few of fellow prowlers asked for Mocktails and we took few sips of them. I particularly liked Elderflower Ice Tea and Hot Wired that was black current flavored ice slush.
Done with the drinks we looked at the Shooters section that had very tempting options as well and we settled for Equator – It had Anis Vodka with fiery Tabasco sauce (hot hot hot) and to beat that spicy heat the chaser with it was fruit jello set it orange peels that revived the the palate.
And when you see Paani Puri on the menu with alcohol in it how can you not order it, so we did have Paani Puri shots a crunchy paani puri with sev and the mint flavored paani spiked with vodka, just perfect. I have done this before at some parties to kill the monotony and get things interesting and it works fabulously, same here people specially girls just cannot have enough of paani puri so these are just the right ones to make them stop after a few.
After tasting all the innovative cocktails to go with my meal I settled for Rum Old Fashion that had spiced rum with bitters and peach flavor, a bitter dark and slightly sweet potion.
So all these drinks and you might be thinking such drunkards we are, in our defense we had wonderful starters going along with all these drinks. They have Multi Cuisine Menu but we majorly ordered from the Indian side of the menu, we had Murg Kaali Mirch Kebab that had juicy chicken tikkas flavored with crushed black pepper just about right in proportion and not overpowering. Jinga Zaitooni had prawns on skewers with black olives, lemon and cherries interesting sweet and sour combination.
For mains we asked Chef to serve his specials for mains, and he did please us with few very tasty preparations. The best of the lot was Murg Rajdhani, by the looks it seemed like regular onion tomato gravy but one bite and it shouted that looks could be deceptive. It had wonderful depth in its flavor with few not so common spices used together and left a wonderful after taste for long.
The Potli Biryani that is a house specialty for years I was told, was really interesting preparation. The Biryani was prepared and filled in a big Bhatura or Maida Potli and then deep fried. The preparation technique is very technical; few minutes here or there or wrong temperature of oil would spoil the Biryani inside the Potli, but nothing to worry here as the chef has mastered the art of making this. The out outer layer of Potli was wonderfully crisp and had an aromatic moist Biryani inside and the meat was also cooked to perfection.
Mutton Angara was a very decent preparation that had a layer of egg white on top of the dish that was flambéed on the table to add some drama to the dish, mutton was cooked very nicely for me it would have been perfect if the gravy was a tad more spicy.
The veg preparation served was Bawarchi ki Khasiyat that was very well prepared flavorful dish went well with the Olive Butter Naan.
To end the meal on a sweet note we had a very well made Caramel Custard and Malai Kulfi.
Custard had perfect caramelization and was not too sweet or bitter.
Last but not the least we had a cocktail Meetha Pan Martini which had pan leaf, gulkand and coconut with cherry bits. Perfect to end a meal on a high 😉
Another good thing about the cocktails is the pricing, they are priced between Rs.199/- to Rs.299/- and the Patiala option with 90 ml alcohol and bigger serving size are for Rs.349/-.
Deccan Harvest has really upped the ante with their drinks and food offerings. It’s worth making the trip.
Deccan Harvest, Magarpatta City, Pune, India | Food Prowl – The Hunger Stories
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