Marathi Food in Sangli-Satara-Kolhapur Belt

Like South India or Gujarat, Maharashtra also offers you different and diverse culture and with culture comes its important ingredient – the food. Like if you go to the Konkan – you would find the food with coconut flavor due to the proximity near the beaches and abundance of Cocunut trees. In Marathwaada, you would find the spicy flavour of Maharashtra. In Vidharbha – you would find the sweets especially the orange ones due to the high abundance or oranges and presence of non-Marathi communities, especially Punjabi, Gujarati and Marwaris who would be the 3-4^th generations.

Satara & Sangli provides you an experience to taste the food of Paschim Maharashtra (West Maharashtra) which is different from the rest.

Sangli :

We had some amazing Misal –Pav at Satara and then over lunch – Yes Boss – that’s the name of a small time local restaurant (Veg one) in Sangli where our friend and colleague Ajay Godse took us to. They served us a Veg Thaal consisting of a platter of veggies like Sukki bhaji (Dry veggie), Bharli vangi (Stuffed brinjal), Shengdana Bhaji (Peanut veggie), Daal-Kadhi, Roti, Bhakri supported by Peanuts, Solkadhi (Buttermilk of kokam), Curd and yes the spicy Thecha (Fresh Green Chilly-Garic paste)

Kolhapur :

In the evening we went to Kolhapur and had some great dinner at a place called Hotel the Woodhouse. My colleague, Sameer was searching for this place and finally we landed at the same post a good search. I had a feeling that by its name, this might be a star restaurant, but the same was just a simple famous roadside Dhaba – food joint. But when we had the food, ambience scores were not necessary and now I know why Sameer took so much efforts to find this place out for us. We ordered a different menu this time – Taaji Methi (Fresh Methi Bhaaji), Pitla (Flour Veggie), Aakha-daal (Whole Pulses), Bhakhri (Bread) and the famous Kolhapuri-Thecha… the meal ended with a Chocolate Paan acting as a dessert cum mouth freshener. One should visit this old hotel and restaurant called “Hotel Opal”  in Kolhapur to experience the best Kohapuri food. Can get the THECHA packed for home (stays for 2 days and then needs to be preserved in deep fridge)

Satara :

On our way back to Satara, we halted at this Sai Darbaar Thali Restaurant (In Maharashtra 7/10 restaurants will have a prefix of Sai... in their names)to have Veg-Thaali which consisted the Chana Masala, Paneer, Aaloo, all Punjabi veggies in a Marathi style… for a change it was a good experience and thanks to Paras Misra our local colleague from Satara for making us drop by a big Haldiraam styled sweet outlet called Rajpurohit for some Satari Pedas – brown sweet balls of milk with no sugar but sugarcane paste – gud, which is a predominant agricultural produce of this area. And the Gulkand Halwa (Rose petals sweet)