Pune on My Plate: Why the city’s best meals involve more walking than sitting around tables

When walks open up the city within

Unlike dining experiences, food walks do not focus on the person who is eating. You are never seated at the centre of an experience but become part of someone else’s everyday life, and your palette then shifts with menus and streets, and from the consumer to the community.

Pune has been particularly receptive to this shift. These walks are attended by people coming from varied age groups, occupations and lifestyles. However, they have been particularly popular among college-going youth and young adults as a meaningful way to explore the city. This activity has gained popularity for a variety of reasons, be it as a romantic first date or as a fun hangout with co-workers.

“What makes walking crucial is its intimacy,” says Pote. When you walk with intention, the food arrives slowly. You wait. You listen. You notice how the street changes character with every turn. Conversations with local residents unfold organically about how quaint the city used to be, their childhood aspirations, or even politics. “The experience is about movement riddled with heat, crowd, standing, waiting, and a shared inconvenience that somehow makes the food taste better,” she adds.

Jayesh Paranjape, the founder of Western Routes, one of Pune’s oldest food walk organisers, traced the renewed interest in food walks directly to the pandemic years. He notes that after long periods of isolation, people began looking for ways to reconnect both socially and spatially. Walking, he says, allows people to understand a city’s heritage at a human pace. “We highlight restaurants serving food for generations. Apart from the food, people usually just come to chat.” Western Routes sees food walks becoming a promising activity in the upcoming year, noting the surge in demand since their inception in 2013.

City heritage walks draw diverse participants, especially youth, for exploration from romantic dates to casual coworker outings (Western Routes photo by Express)

Coming for food, staying for people
With more organisers entering this space, the format was also explored by the Hungry Food Walk, started in 2017 by food blogger Madhav Dadwe. The aim, he says, was never to chase what was new, but to “experience the lesser-known gems of Pune,” an idea shaped through conversations with chefs from ITC. The walks were kept deliberately pocket-friendly and small because, as he puts it, “food tastes different and conversations are real when the group is intimate.”

The routes move through the Peth areas, Camp, Tilak Road, Viman Nagar, with festive editions during Eid in Fatima Nagar and Camp. Over time, something else emerged. “They came for the food,” Dadwe says, “but stayed for the people.” Visitors turned into friends, friends into co-workers, forming a growing community bound by a shared fascination with food and its history, ingredients and stories.

Hungry Food Walk explores Pune’s lesser known culinary gems through intimate pocket friendly tours led by blogger Madhav Dadwe (Express)

Some of the most famous food walk routes include the Breakfast Trail of Old Pune, exploring delightful treats that the city has been eating for years; the Camp Walk through iconic eateries such Garden Vada Pav, Dorabjee & Sons Husseny Bakery, Marz-O-Rin; and the Koregaon Park Crawls, experiencing the more novel, vibrant and glamourous foods that the city has to offer. The eateries, too, have responded positively to the growing trend since this collaboration brings food-loving customers who are likely to revisit.

What unites these initiatives are the people who are hungry, yes, but also curious. The community grows because it is porous and allows people from all demographics, including tourists, migrants, students, grandparents and their grandkids, to join, return, and bring others along. At a time when eating out is often about being seen in the right place, food walks ask what it means to move through a city and be moved by a city.

The answer, it turns out, is not something you sit down to consume. but something you step out to walk into.

Shreenija Dandavate is an intern with The Indian Express.