ITP Indian Travel Places: Food, Travel, Tourism Business Events and Trade Shows
Restaurant Name: Origins, Kothrud, Pune
Phone: +918766738345, +912025467376
Address: 3-4-5, Flat 1, Survey 47/5, Vandana Apartment, Kothrud, Pune, Maharashtra 411038 India
Time: 11:00 AM – 4:00 PM, 7:00 PM – 11:00 PM
Meals for two: Rs. 1,600
Cuisines: Asian, Sushi, Japanese, Thai, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Korean
Facilities: Home Delivery, Takeaway Available, Indoor Seating, Table booking recommended
Origins is a pan-Asian restaurant located near Paud Phata in Kothrud. Considering the range of dishes on the menu, it is one of the very few gourmet oriental restaurants in the area.
Origins, Kothrud, Pune: Decor
Origins is located on Paud Road, but with the metro construction, it is easy to miss the blue-red-white name board. It would be advisable to add an additional signage board that can be easily spotted while driving past. The decor is simple and elegantly done. The use of Chinese lantern inspired lampshades throughout the restaurant give that oriental touch and elevate the ambience. The seating, a mix of sofas and wooden chairs is comfortable. The outdoor section which faces the main road is operational only on some days. Apart from the planters, the decor here seems incomplete. Maybe because of the heavy metro work happening on the road. Hopefully, this will change in the future. It would be great to have an outdoor section as elegantly decorated as the indoor section.
Origins, Kothrud, Pune: Food
The menu is a great mix of pan-Asian dishes and includes an impressive line-up of sushis and some rare dishes like Cheung Fung, katsu and bibimbap. We started with two incredible seafood soups – a perfectly balanced spicy crab soup and a hearty hot and sour seafood soup. The crab soup was clean, rightly spicy and extremely generous with the crab meat. From the sushi section, we got the sweet prawns futomaki, smoked salmon hosomaki and the asparagus and cream cheese hosomaki. The sushis were perfectly rolled and all the ingredients were extremely fresh. Each sushi dish was elegantly presented and the plating was unique and creative. The quality of the ingredients was top-notch and was evident in the taste. We explored the dim sums section next and got the veg crystal dumplings and the edamame black truffle dumplings. The crystal dumplings looked beautiful and tasted incredible. The edamame truffle dumplings had a delightful umami kick. Both these dumplings were a work of art. The Japanese chicken gyoza came next. These potstickers tasted good but they were slightly oily. The best dumplings among the lot were the poached chicken dumplings, served in a flavorful sauce alongside a spicy garlic dip and a delicious apple sauce. Very rarely you will find Cheung Fung on pan-Asian restaurant menus and it was heartening to find it at Origins. The lone option is the crispy prawns Cheung Fung, where crispy golden fried prawns are rolled in steamed rice broad noodles. The rolls were delicious and dunking them in a dark soy sauce elevated the taste further. For mains, we kept it simple and vegetarian and ordered the wok-tossed exotic veggies, trilogy of mushrooms and an edamame fried rice. While the trilogy of mushroom w a s excellent, the wok-tossed veggies were under-seasoned and lacked flavour.
Asian restaurants are never big on desserts. At Origins too, there are just a few options to pick from. We got the coconut dumplings which were filled with a sticky coconut filling along with almonds and topped with sweet coconut milk and honey sauce.
Plus & Minus:
Origins impresses with the quality of ingredients and the taste of food. The chef and his team meticulously and creatively put forward an impressive menu. It is one of the very few pan-Asian restaurants in Kothrud and more people should know about it. Luckily for me, it is a 5-minute drive from home and I will be going back again to try the many dishes I missed out on the first time. I would really like more lamb options and the addition of pork options to the menu and hopefully, they will soon take it upon themselves to spruce up the outdoor section, which currently looks like a marriage hall set-up.
