The Munch Box, Kharadi, Pune, India

Restaurant Name: The Munch Box
Location: 7, Fortune Plaza, Near World Trade Centre, Kharadi, Pune.
Buzz: +91-75073 53235
Contact Person(s): Ms. Shweta Lalwani / Mr. Akshay Lalwani

The Munch Box – Kharadi’s very own café next door

The Munch Box is an absolute hidden gem of Kharadi. Ms.Shweta Lalwani, a young entrepreneur along with her brother runs this lovely place. The interiors are brightly lit (by the day) not too overcrowded by tables place, with a little corner seating for the ones who love the coffee with a breeze and well stocked with board games.

Food Prowl Team visited The Munch Box and had a splendid time.  The menu has been kept to be a mix of comfort food and popular dishes from various cuisines – Indian, Asian, European and Middle Eastern. They also have different portion sizes; food on the go that is easy to carry around while you are on the move, small bites for in between meals and full servings and munch boxes for a full meal.

We tried a mix of all the categories on the menu.

Our food tasting started with Shaami Kebabs. The shaami kebabs were still under trials and not on actual menu, they needed few tweaks to become damn good kebabs, they were there but just another round of fine adjustments to the recipe.

The Chicken Empanadas, looking at empanadas one would feel that the serving was missing a dip but one bite into that flaky crispy pastry crust and you would know why it doesn’t require any side, a very juicy and moist chicken filling is all good by itself.

Spinach Dog, the name brought up lot of imagery but what came on the platter was something very intriguingly different. A loaf of bread with a spinach and cheese center spine toasted and cut into thick slices. Perfectly complementing textures of bread and spinach and mildly spiced flavors to let spinach be the king of this preparation. We all loved it and ordered for more.

We sipped on some Americano Coffee, Hot Chocolate and Fresh Lime while we gave some time to ourselves before mains and all were well prepared.

The maincourse started with Assorted Sandwich Platter, Garden Pizza and Chicken Geschnetzettes. Again all the preps thoroughly impressed us. The Sandwich platter had 3 small portions, one Chicken Tikka Slider, Smoked Chicken Sandwich in multigrain bread and a Mushroom Pesto Panini.

All the sandwiches had abundance of fresh flavors and right proportion of filling; I especially liked the Slider as the chicken tikka patty was very juicy and flavorful.

The Garden Pizza had a very very thin and crisp crust loaded with cheese and veggies  – corn, olives, bell peppers and jalapenos for that punch, the base made it a very good pizza.

Finally we had the Swiss chicken preparation – Zurich Geschnetzeltes, the name is a tongue twister and the preparation was a tongue pleaser.

Bite size pieces of chicken done in a white creamy sauce with herbs served with hash browns and fresh salad, when it is a cheesy sauce seldom things go wrong, this one will surely be loved by everyone every time.

Last but no way the least we stomached in the entire dessert platters. Shweta is a trained pastry Chef and she is always experimenting in the kitchen and her love for desserts showed on those lovely platters. It had – Pineapple Coconut and White Chocolate Cake, Opera Pastry, Salted Caramel Cheesecake and Chocolate Tart.

Yes we had all that, one it was impossible for us to pick just one favorite, the Opera was that punch of coffee soaked sponge and smoothness of buttercream and ganache, and the cheesecake was of finest quality as well. All desserts were great.

That ended a very happy meal and we came back wide a wide smile on everyone’s face.

Special Thanks to Ms. Godhuli RajKumar for organizing this food tasting at The Munch Box.

The Munch Box, Kharadi, Pune, India | Food Prowl – The Hunger Stories