Located off the main road in Koregaon Road in Pune, this pan-asian restaurant serves a vast menu of pan-asian foods. With a small area for al fresco dining, Malaka Spice appears popular with locals and foreigners alike. Each table is lit with a clever floating candle in water device with enough light to add ambiance without hindering anyone’s ability to see. They serve a variety of alcohol and although I don’t remember any specific music here, had a low-key enough atmosphere to have a great conversation and still feel like you’re still around a lot of people.

One of its unique properties is the art work they advertise all around the place. The tables have mugs you can buy, the walls also hanging art for sale and I think they offer cartoon characterures on specific days as well. It’s not grossly in your face as many other places can be and before we even knew it, most of the table centric ones had disappeared (probably more so to stop them disappearing into any bags than anything else).

Service here is brisk and it’s pretty easy to flag down a waiter if there’s any need. The quality of the food is pretty decent although they managed to stuff up some of our orders with a couple of starters coming with the main dishes. On the other hand, they didn’t hesitate to keep asking us if we wanted to get a top of our of pitcher of beer.

We all had a pretty enjoyable night and I’d definitely come back here again. We had some great seafood dishes and there’s plenty more to try.

Details: Malaka Spice
Found at: Vrindavan Apartments, North Main Road, Koregaon Park, Pune – 411 001
Contactable on: 020 26136293
Highlights: Wide selection of pan asian dishes in a popular al fresco dining atmosphere with generally friendly service.
Room for improvement: Getting the food out on time would have been nice, without the need of being excessively pushy with drinks.
Cost: I can’t remember exactly how much we paid, but I think it was in the order of INR600-800 for starters, mains with rice/noodles, and beer.
The Kua Rating: 7.5 out of 10