Flavours of Awadh

This new restaurant at kalyani nagar serves melt-in-your-mouth kebabs and succulent curries recreating awadh (Lucknow) in Puneu00a0u00a0

Pune is dotted with non-vegetarian Indian restaurants, ranging from the mutton-bhakri variety to five-star North West Frontier cuisine. So when a new fine-dine eatery opened in an interior Kalyani Nagar lane famed for its corner Kebab restaurant, we wondered how they would manage to compete. No 9 Park's menuu00a0 predominantly featured Awadhi cuisine. Plus, the owners regaled us with stories of how they had to include basic Punjabi fare to please a larger audience. And then they also had a small Continental menu as the chef-cum-partner's wife is Italian. Since they claimed that Awadhi cuisine is their piece de resistence, we ignored the foreign lands and came home to Lucknow.

No 9 Park
Food: superior
Service: polite
Ambience: simple

An assortment of dishes at No 9 restaurant at Kalyani Nagar.u00a0
Pic/ Digvijay Sabne

From the land of the toothless Nawab that gave us the melt-in-your-mouth kakori and the famed chef Imtiaz Qureshi, Awadhi cuisine is known for its subtle flavours and tender meats. We began our journey with a Mutton Galawat Ke Kebab (Rs 300). We can vouch that the toothless Nawab would be salivating in his grave. Then, came our vegetarian choiceu00a0-- the Diwani Bhindi (Rs 165), a bowl of al dente lady fingers marinated in an onion-tomato-spices mix, that actually tasted great even to a non-green lover. Our naans (Rs 25) and butter rotis (Rs 30) were a great compliment as well to the ladies fingers.

For the mains, we chose a steaming bowl of fluffy pristine white rice (Rs 100) to go along with our Amritsari Machi Curry (Rs 295). The red, delicious, lick-clean-off-the-plate curry, with its fillet chunks of fish, was so gorgeous that we polished off the whole bowl of rice along with it.

For souls with sensitive tummies, the proof of the pudding doesn't end with the eating; it ends with a calm good night's sleep without burning acidity. And that's the prize that No 9 Park managed to win. They may be hidden away but, like authentic North Indian food that's close to impossible to find outside of the five-star in Pune, No 9 Park is a gem worth discovering.

At: Shop no 1, North Court, near Joggers Park, Kalyani Nagar.
Call: 26651629