No spectacle, no fancy plating—just food you keep coming back for, for years together. Harshita Lalwani gets a glimpse into the kitchen at New Poona Boarding House.
Having lived in a residential neighbourhood of North Pune for most of my life, I’ve watched the locality expand to accommodate more and more restaurants serving up trendy dishes at hefty prices. It’s hard for one to feel at home whilst having a meal at these eateries, where time is a luxury and high table turnover a priority. In pursuit of the opposite, I am drawn to travelling all the way across the city to my favourite restaurant in Pune—New Poona Boarding House—which is also its oldest Maharashtrian bhojanalay. But as a Sindhi living in this Maharashtrian city, what really deepened my relationship with this establishment was finding out that it’s run by a third-generation immigrant family.
Upon arriving, I wait in line for ten minutes, and then sit down for a meal I’ve been eating ever since I was young. The familiar flavours, and the reassurance that I can spend as much time on their shared tables as I need, allows me to simply come as I am, stay as I always have.
On a rare sunny afternoon amidst a tempestuous monsoon, I’m venturing into the old city of Pune, almost 7.5 kilometres from where I live, for Poona Boarding’s Maharashtrian thali. Even though its location is indicated by a large neon board outside the unassuming building in which it is housed, New Poona Boarding House doesn’t have to work that hard to make its presence known. As I enter, dozens of people are scooping masale bhaat into their hands, downing it with a cup of mattha—a type of buttermilk made from coriander, jaggery, and ginger.
The restaurant is buzzing with the frenzy of servers doling out ladle after ladle of alu chi bhaji and aamti. The current owner—and grandson of the founder—Suhas Udupikar, is somehow seating patrons at tables, answering the phone, and bringing in food from the kitchen all at once. The dining area is engulfed in the gentle whiff of fresh chapatis that are perfect to soak up the light-orange cauliflower batata rassa (a cauliflower and potato gravy), that’s available on Saturdays.
After clearing the tables as the lunch crowd slowly dissipates, Suhas sits down with me to talk about what makes his establishment last this long. His grandfather, Gururaj Ramkrishna Udupikar, moved from Udupi to Pune in 1925, and opened what was then called Poona Boarding House which served Maharashtrian fare to students and bachelors living in the Peth area. Often known as ‘Maniappa che khanaval’ (Maniappa’s eatery), Suhas’ grandfather—who was affectionately called ‘Maniappa’—developed spice mixes and recipes for the dishes that proudly feature on their menu today. “Our menu, our recipes, and our processes of making all the dishes have remained more or less the same since my grandfather’s time,” he beams.
When asked about the decision to open a Maharashtrian khanavalor bhojanalay, Suhas posits that his grandfather was perhaps adapting to the dominant culture, and what he must’ve observed as the common local fare of the mid-1920s in Pune. “The eating-out culture was vastly different then to what it is now. There was no demand for eating different regional cuisines, nor was it something families indulged in often. So I assume my grandfather wanted to stick to a cuisine that locals would be familiar with.”
There are some common threads that tie the dishes together: like the ubiquitous presence of jaggery in almost every preparation, a simple mustard seed and curry leaf phodni (tempering), and the brightening notes of sour tamarind pulp, which add a whole new flavour. Of course, most dishes are incomplete without the snow-like drizzle of desiccated coconut. Suhas adds that his grandfather was an excellent cook, and would often lend his own twists to recipes. This is evident, as they don’t taste the same as aamtis (varieties of dal) and masale bhaats (spiced rice dishes) served at other establishments in the city—adaptability and culinary ingenuity both inadvertent consequences of migration. It is also something I’ve noticed in my own eating habits, from seeking out traditional Sindhi and Maharashtrian fare, like the subtle presence of curry leaves in homemade Sindhi food despite being a non-native ingredient to the cuisine.
There are some common threads that tie the dishes together: like the ubiquitous presence of jaggery in almost every preparation, a simple mustard seed and curry leaf phodni (tempering), and the brightening notes of sour tamarind pulp.
“Feeding people is a part of our lineage as we come from the Math community of Shree Krishna Temple in Udupi,” shares Suhas. The Math community has been involved in the service of feeding devotees, primarily in temple kitchens in Karnataka, for centuries. Suhas’ grandfather stayed true to his family legacy by turning their passion for nourishment into a family business.
In 1973, this loyalty from their patrons led them to move to a larger space next door to accommodate their growing clientele. As their dining space expanded to feed more diners, so did their kitchen. While the restaurant and hot kitchen are on the first floor of the premises, their storage and kitchen prep takes place on the ground floor of the same building in two separate rooms. One of these rooms contains fresh produce like tomatoes, cucumbers, cauliflowers, cabbages and an array of other vegetables; all the chopping takes place here, in a large steel thaali with a slanted wooden board to make the process quicker and easier. The other room is where grain is stored. Here, the gentle sound of kilograms of rice being cleaned and sorted as well as the many sacks of wheat—50 kilograms is used to yield 2,000 chapatis daily—speak to the scale and volume at which Poona Boarding House operates its kitchen.
The hot kitchen converts this large volume of grains, pulses, and chopped vegetables into aamti, hirvya vatane che usal (green peas usal), moogachi khichadi, and bright yellow kadhi, stored in steel pots. Then there are huge pots filled to the brim with fluffy white rice, almost 40 kilograms worth of it.
New Poona Boarding House started out with serving 30 to 40 people daily in 1925; today, it serves over 500 people a day. For an eatery to have this enormous a table turnover in its hundredth year is no small feat, especially in times when restaurants open and shut in the blink of an eye. “Unless and until you enjoy your work, you can’t reach here,” Suhas believes. For him, attention to detail and a genuine commitment to people’s dining experience are key to turning new diners into regulars.
His day starts at 7 am to begin prep for lunch service, heating large vats of water to cook down dals and sprouts. His kitchen staff only preps vegetables for the koshimbir close to 12 pm. This quintessentially Maharashtrian combination of chopped cucumbers and tomatoes, along with crushed peanuts and curd must be in the freshest possible state when served. From making an extra pot of dal to keeping thecha (a tear-inducing condiment of garlic, green chillies, and peanuts) ready for his more spice-tolerant clients, he doesn’t just want them to eat what’s put in front of them. He wants them to feel like they’re at home, where you can always request for some extra loncha, another helping of rice, and, of course, a generous drizzle of toop on your bhaat.
Suhas extends this same steadfastness in his choice of seasonal produce. “We stopped serving aamras after 16 May this summer because of the early rains. My vendor advised against buying mangoes once the rains start, as their quality cannot be guaranteed,” he explains.
However, the main attraction, that every regular knows is available over the weekend, is the sweet alu chi bhaji and the lightly spiced, fragrant masale bhaat. The pulverised, jaggery-infused colocasia leaves of the bhaji are the perfect accompaniment to the masale bhaat that comes adorned generously with desiccated coconut. In fact, this dish might be one of their most labour-inducing to prepare. If you were to make it at home, it would take you 15 minutes to cook the leaves alone, after which they are stewed in peanuts, jaggery, and tiny fragmented discs of dried coconut. “People come to the restaurant over the weekend so they can either order alu chi bhaji in bulk [to take home] or eat it here, because it’s very difficult to prepare at home,” Suhas shares. My palate has come to associate Sunday lunches with alu chi bhaji, even though we don’t usually cook with colocasia leaves at home. There’s something about partaking in this communal experience of a Maharashtrian Sunday lunch that bridges the gap between my inherited cultural identity and my adopted cultural identity.
“People come to the restaurant over the weekend so they can either order alu chi bhaji in bulk [to take home] or eat it here, because it’s very difficult to prepare at home.”
My favourite dishes from the thali aren’t made regularly at home, nor are the staples similar to what’s in a Sindhi kitchen. And yet, it’s one of the meals I enjoy eating most in Pune.
It was only when I began to speak with Suhas did I realise that New Poona Boarding House has contributed to how I perceive my own city. Our families were brought to the same city by migratory trajectories for which both of us don’t quite have the answers. While my paternal grandfather moved to Pune during the Partition, which expelled him from Sindh and drew boundaries between the home he knew and a new city he then had to adopt as his own, Suhas’ grandfather broke down the boundaries of what was familiar to him—be it the language he spoke or the food he chose to cook—to integrate his family into this city.
Just like Suhas’ grandfather, I find it futile to separate the diasporic and Puneri parts of me. I’m from Pune despite not being Maharashtrian. I love eating masale bhaat and alu chi bhaji as much as I love eating Sindhi makroli aloo patata and rice. In some ways, New Poona Boarding House reflects this false dichotomy in its history and menu. It allows me to blur these lines even further, and to just be.
Harshita is the Marketing Lead at The Locavore with a background in book publishing and sustainable food systems campaigns. She’s also a food writer with a newsletter called Sindhi with a Dash of Hindi wherein she looks at Sindhi foodways through the lens of history, gender, and migration. In her spare time, she watches compilations of BTS, cats, and K-dramas, preferably all at once.
Inside My Kitchen
Every kitchen has a unique story to tell. Attempting to capture some of these stories from across India, Inside My Kitchen is a series that examines the relationship between the kitchen and the people who inhabit it.
