Farzi Café, Kalyani Nagar, Pune

As with most of my experiences, we landed up here without much research coz we were in a last minute rush to find a place to celebrate the start of my birthday(yayy) and this is literally the first place you come across as you enter Kalyani Nagar(hehe) and of course because Zomato said it was trending(best app ever)!! 😉

My first realization when I reached there was that it’s a lounge, and not a restaurant like I had initially thought. So don’t go there for a quiet evening or for a conversations-over-dinner kind of a night. There’s some loud music, amazing ambience and a super busy bar.. you get the picture right? 🙂

So..speaking of painting the picture, there’s been a lot of thought put into designing the whole place. There are quirky little quotes and drawings all over the menu. The cocktails are served with a twist. Anything you order is sent out of the kitchen in a unique dish. You can see someone being served something in a small truck. Someone else is pulling out lollipops out of branches of a mini ceramic tree. The menu itself has not a single dish that you may have already heard of…everything has been fused with something else and a unique combination has been created.  The whole place oozes DRAMA!

The cocktails here are quite good. There has been innovation involved and the menu shows.

And finally we come to the food. I keep the food for last because I am not entirely convinced about it. You see there’s so much effort been put into reinventing the Indian cuisine to a fusion, and the effort is so apparent that I WANT to LOVE the food. But the problem is, my taste buds are too khadoos to be bought out by my swaying heart. The menu primarily offers Indian food, ofcourse redesigned Indian food, but Indian food nevertheless. We went for the “Amritsari Fish & Chips, Desi Ghee Hollandaise”. It was good, the fish had been cooked well, but otherwise it was pretty standard fish & chips one can find anywhere.

Then we tried the “Tandoori Soy Chops, Cheese & Nut Fudge, Burhani Cream”. This, I was super excited for, but was unfortunately very disappointed. If you have tasted Soya Chaap, that’s what this is. Only, here the problem was that the chops were too big! So as long as you had the nutty masala to give the soy company, it tasted OK, but once you took a bite in the middle of the chop, it tasted too bland! The “Cheese & Nutty Fudge” was a tandoori masala with nuts, but it didn’t taste too different from the regular tandoori masala and I wasn’t impressed.

We also went for the “Bacon & Eggs, Curry Leaf & Pink Pepper Appam”. It was good, the chutney, I must admit, was great. But I have definitely eaten better Appams.

Finally we asked for the “Ras Malai, Tres Leches, Carrot Cream, Rose Petal Net” which was basically a layered cake of ras malai and gajar halwa. While good, again, it wasn’t extra-ordinary.

So in conclusion, the problem with the place is, the menu describes too many variations, but when you take a bite, you realize there’s actually nothing very different from what you get in any regular Indian restaurant. Their USP is definitely their flair in dramatic presentation and that is worthy of applause! So head there with friends for some great ambience, for the lovely energy in the place, for some great drinks and for some amazing presentation, but don’t go with the hope for extraordinary food!

My Ratings for the place would be :

Ambience : 4/5 ; Service      : 4/5 ; Food          : 2.5/5 ; Pocket Friendly : 3/5 (About 1800 for the food+alcohol) ; Presentation : 5/5