A new restaurant in Pune offers Mediterranean and Middle Eastern flavours with a modern Indian twist

Einkorn plates kick off with the Thirty Layer Truffle Latke, served alongside a delicate aioli, and Parmesan Jalebi, accompanied by a denser saffron aioli. A feat of slow cooking, each latke, served here with a half-petal of truffle on cheese, glues razor-thin potato slivers to resemble the pages of a barely opened book. Marwah has been racing against time to serve them, saying, “We cook the potato for 12 hours, let it rest for 24; it takes 48 hours in total.”

Meanwhile, the jalebi rings, made of fermented jalebi batter and later blended in with Parmesan, turn into savoury, soft spiral fragments in the saffron dip, which in combination should not taste as good as it does. Another einkorn pick, Egg & Roe Tart, builds a tiny Jenga of colliding flavours, stacking relish on a canape with spices, a hard-boiled quail egg, and briny, neon orange tobiko.

Pashtun Kebab, an emmer plate, sticks close to its original bones—a chicken mince flattened like a chapli kebab patty with a hot pickled chilli as garnish. The kebab is fragrant and grainy by itself, but stuff it into a little portion of saffron-infused sheermal, along with burani raita and pickled veggies for a heartier effect.

While the restaurant’s menu is not neatly divided along vegetarian/non-vegetarian lines, the meat-free list looks robust. Choices range from a Levantine Salad (veggies, fruit, and chickpeas in a honey and tahina dressing) and Alleppey Cottage Cheese (which comes with the Alleppey fish-style polichathu sauce) to the Mujaddara (their take on the Lebanese lentils-and-rice staple).

From the spelt section, the kitchen whips up two dishes: Flower Of The Forest, well sautéed enoki and shimeji mushrooms on a cushion of crispy pan seared arborio rice cake soaked in cheese sauce; and the Kuttanad Sea Bass, a crusty fish fillet doused in a sauce made from raw coconut and mango. The former feels like flambéed mushroom risotto, and might be the dish that stands out the least from the dinner. Marwah adds handfuls of spicy puffed rice onto the fish fillet plate before pouring the sauce. As you slice off a piece of the fillet, you’ll notice the crumbly, pepper-inflected crust, precisely seasoned, which when spooned with the fruity coconut sauce is somehow even more improved.