1000 Oaks Restaurant in Pune, India: West Meets East

If you ever find yourself in the wonderful Maharashtrian city of Pune, India and you want some food, I recommend the 1000 Oaks Restaurant, where you’ll find delicious Indian food, delicious dessert, friendly staff and some bathroom humor.

After a long day of errands, our driver/friend took us to a restaurant that looked really nice, but it was only vegetarian and no alcohol.

Josh, wanting to have a beer after a long day, and myself craving a non-veg meal, we decided to go find another restaurant. Our driver said that most restaurants in Pune are vegetarian and no alcohol. We were pretty surprised. I am sure there are plenty of non-veg restaurants that provide alcohol, he just doesn’t know about them, I assume.

After a 5 min drive, he remembered a restaurant he had been to some time ago during a Western wedding in Pune, so we stopped there.

It was empty, but they were open. (Josh and I have a knack for having meals at different times than everyone else). The restaurant was called 1000 Oaks and it had a nice outdoor seating area.

I realize I’m not drinking tea but I can’t help it, the pinky wants to stick out. Let it.

We ordered: Tandoori chicken, fish curry, jeera rice, garlic naan, butter roti, mojitos, and beer.

In India, it is common to order dishes for everyone to share, rather than each person ordering their own dish.

Tandoori chicken came first to the table and it was heavenly.

Then, the remainder of the food came at once.

Everything was delicious. They decided to make the fish less spicy than usual for us Westerners, and they were right to do so.

Later, I went inside to use the restroom and I found this:

And this:

Finally, even though they had a nice Indian desserts menu, I had to go with the old-fashioned American dessert: brownie with vanilla ice cream. I wasn’t expecting much from it. But then it arrived in a hot plate, the waiter poured some hot fudge to cover the whole ice cream scoop, and it started simmering on the plate; you can see the bubbles in the picture. Then, I had a bite, and it was, like the tandoori, heavenly. The hot brownie with the cold ice cream was so good, and the flavor was amazing! (I can be picky when it comes to chocolate.)

I was the only one of four, who ordered dessert, and I was going to devour the whole thing by myself. When I was about halfway done I offered Shekhar a bite. Then Adinath tasted it. And they didn’t express much but clearly loved it. So, I decided to sacrifice the rest to let them have it. They were eventually scraping off the fudge from the plate. That’s how good of a person I am, I will give you my last three bites of brownie and daydream about having another brownie some other day haha.

I think this was their first time having a western style dessert.