Before we signed anything in Aundh, we made ourselves one promise: the new Platesman would not be a copy of the one in Bavdhan.
That sounds obvious. It isn’t. The standard playbook for a second restaurant is simple: clone the first one. Same chairs, same walls, same menu board, because it worked once, so why touch anything? And honestly, we’d earned the right to do exactly that. Bavdhan works. People love it. The regulars have their tables, the bestsellers have their fan clubs, and the place hums the way we always hoped it would. There is comfort in repeating something that has already proved itself, especially when customers already know what to expect.
But that’s exactly why copying it felt lazy. Bavdhan spent two years teaching us things. What people actually order versus what we assumed they’d order. Which corner everyone gravitates to. What a good Tuesday dinner feels like versus a good Saturday one. Which dishes become regular orders and which ones people try once. How people behave when they are coming in for a quick meal compared with when they settle in with friends. All of that knowledge deserved more than a photocopy. It deserved a new canvas.
So Aundh isn’t a Bavdhan duplicate. It’s everything Bavdhan taught us, expressed fresh. Same soul, new body. We wanted to keep the parts that made Platesman feel like Platesman, while giving the new outlet enough room to become part of its own neighbourhood. Here’s the full tour.
Why Aundh
We didn’t pick Aundh off a map. We ate our way through it first.
Weeks of it. Lunches, dinners, random 4 pm snack runs. We wanted to understand the neighbourhood as people who eat there, not just as people looking for the next restaurant location. And a pattern kept showing up. Aundh has restaurants everywhere you look, but try finding continental comfort food that’s freshly made, actually healthy, and actually fills you up. Fast food, sure. Fancy places, plenty. Cafés for coffee and quick bites are easy to find too. The middle, where you get a proper wholesome meal in a relaxed spot without the ceremony or the bill shock? Wide open.
Good. That’s our lane. It’s the lane Bavdhan proved works, and Aundh was clearly waiting for it. We liked the idea of creating a place that could fit into different parts of someone’s day. Breakfast without making an event out of it. Lunch that doesn’t feel too heavy. A proper evening meal. Something comfortable enough to become a regular habit rather than a restaurant you only remember when there’s an occasion.
Everything about Platesman Aundh got built around that one insight. The menu, the seating, the plating, all of it answers the same question: what does this neighbourhood actually want to eat, and where would they want to eat it? That question sounds simple, but it shaped dozens of decisions, from what made it onto the menu to how we wanted the restaurant to feel when somebody walked in for the first time.
Two Menus, One Philosophy
Let’s talk food, starting with how the two outlets compare, because people keep asking.
The short answer: the heart is identical, and Aundh gave us room to grow it.
Everything you love at Bavdhan is on the Aundh menu. The continental comfort plates that built our name, freshly prepared, genuinely filling, the kind of food where healthy and satisfying stop being opposites. Those travel to Aundh untouched, because you don’t rewrite the classics. If you have a favourite at Bavdhan, it’s waiting for you in Aundh, and it tastes exactly the same. We’ve standardised recipes and prep across both kitchens to ensure consistency. Ingredients, portions, preparation and the final plate all have to feel familiar. Your favourite stays your favourite, whichever pin code you’re in.
What Aundh added is the expansion. We recently grew the menu, and the headline act is our Indian bowls. These weren’t a chef’s experiment or a trend we spotted on Instagram. Customers kept asking, again and again, at both outlets. They wanted Platesman’s approach to food in flavours that felt even more familiar to everyday Indian eating. So we built them, tested them on our most brutally honest regulars, listened to what worked and what didn’t, refined them until the feedback turned into reorders, and put them up. They’re already among our most ordered dishes, and yes, they’re available in Bavdhan too. Aundh just happened to be where the expanded menu got its grand opening, launching with the full range from day one.
That’s the real difference between the menus: not what’s missing where, but where each one started. Bavdhan’s menu grew organically over two years, shaped dish by dish by the people eating it. Some dishes became favourites immediately, while others taught us what people expected from Platesman. Aundh’s menu arrived fully grown, carrying all of that evolution on opening day. It didn’t have to spend its first months discovering what Bavdhan had already taught us. One is the original album. The other is the remastered edition with bonus tracks. Both are worth playing on repeat.
And the philosophy behind both is the same one we’ve had since day one: we’re not loyal to any cuisine; we’re loyal to whoever’s eating. If enough of you want something and we can make it well, it goes on the menu. Some days comfort is a hearty continental plate. Some days it’s a warm bowl of something familiar. Some days you want something lighter, and on another day you want the meal that keeps you full for hours. The menu moves with your mood. It doesn’t lecture you. That’s also why we keep listening instead of deciding that a printed menu is ever completely finished.
A Small Space We Obsessed Over
We’re a small, cosy place and proud of it. Bavdhan proved that small and cosy, done with actual thought, beats big and impersonal every single time. A smaller restaurant has its own kind of energy. You notice the food arriving at another table. You start recognising the team. Regulars become familiar faces. Aundh takes that idea and plays with it rather than trying to become bigger simply because it is the second outlet.
The Aundh restaurant has a format we’re a little in love with: dining that’s enclosed yet open-air. You’re covered, you’re comfortable, and you still get that outdoor airiness while you eat. In Pune weather, it works nearly all year, and it turns a quick meal into a small outing without anyone planning for one. It gives the space a casual quality that fits the food too. You can walk in for a regular meal and still feel like you stepped away from the day for a while.
Then there’s the vertical garden. We put it in because we like plants; honestly, that was the whole strategy. It’s become the most photographed corner of the restaurant. People sit next to it, point it out, take their reels in front of it. A wall of living green does something to a room that no amount of paint can. It softens the space, gives the restaurant an instantly recognisable corner, and makes something relatively simple feel alive. We didn’t build it to become a feature people talked about, but that’s exactly what happened.
Speaking of which, Aundh has its own personality visually. We went heavier on white this time, and the effect hits you at the door: the whole space reads fresh and open before you’ve even sat down. That choice was intentional. We wanted the new location to carry the same relaxed character without simply borrowing every visual decision from Bavdhan. Bavdhan has its warmth; Aundh has its brightness. Sibling restaurants, not twins. You should know you’re at Platesman without wondering whether you’ve somehow walked into the same outlet in another neighbourhood.
Even the plants got debated. Money plants over bamboo, this time. They suit the light here, they look better against the white, and if you’re someone who cares about vastu, they bring that along too. Is choosing between two plants a small decision? Completely. But a restaurant is basically a hundred small decisions stacked on top of each other. The distance between tables, how a corner feels, what catches your eye when you enter and whether the space still feels comfortable when it’s busy all matter. We’d rather argue about every one of them than phone a single one in.
The Craft You’ll Taste but Won’t See
The most valuable things Bavdhan taught us aren’t photogenic. They’re operational, and Aundh got to inherit all of them on day one. A new restaurant might look finished when the lights switch on and the doors open, but the things that make it work consistently usually take much longer to develop. This time, we weren’t beginning with zero experience.
Kitchen rhythm, for one. Two years of Bavdhan service taught us exactly how a weekend rush flows versus a lazy weekday lunch, which stations need to talk to each other, and how to keep food moving without rushing a single plate. You learn where bottlenecks happen, what needs to be prepared before the orders arrive and how different parts of the kitchen have to move together. The Aundh kitchen was laid out around that knowledge from its first hour. Most restaurants take years to find that rhythm. Aundh opened with it.
Consistency, for another. It’s the least glamorous thing we work on and probably the most important. A great first meal only matters if the second and third visits live up to it too. Same recipes, same prep standards, same quality checks at both outlets, so the dish you loved last month tastes the same today, in either neighbourhood. For us, expansion only works if opening another outlet doesn’t change what people already trust us for.
Hospitality too. Everything our Bavdhan regulars taught us, when to recommend, when to leave you alone, why remembering a face matters, went straight into training the Aundh team. Good hospitality isn’t about constantly interrupting a table to ask whether everything is fine. It’s knowing what different customers need. Some want recommendations. Some already know exactly what they’re ordering. Some are catching up with friends and want space. Warmth like that usually takes a restaurant years to develop. We got to transplant it.
And packaging. A lot of you meet Platesman on a delivery app long before you walk in, which means for you, the packaging IS the restaurant. There is no ambience, no vertical garden and no team member standing there to explain the dish. The food and how it arrives have to do all of the talking. Ours is designed so the meal that leaves our kitchen reaches your table at home hot, intact, and looking like we plated it in front of you. Delivery shouldn’t feel like the second-best version of eating Platesman.
None of this was luck. It’s two years of learning, compounding. Every busy evening, customer comment, repeat order and mistake taught us something that could be carried into Aundh. That’s the advantage of building the second restaurant instead of simply copying the first.
We’re Not a Traditional Restaurant. On Purpose.
This is the part we actually care about most.
Platesman runs on a young, slightly restless team, and both outlets are permanently a work in progress in the best possible way. We don’t believe that opening the doors means the restaurant is finished. Customer feedback isn’t a form we make you fill. It’s genuinely our product roadmap. The Indian bowls exist because you asked. The brighter Aundh interiors exist because we watched how people use our spaces. The menu keeps growing because you keep telling us what you’re craving. Sometimes customers confirm that something is working. Other times, they make us question an assumption we were completely convinced about. Both are useful.
Tell us something on your next visit, and there’s a decent chance it changes what we do the week after. That’s not us being humble; that’s literally how the bowls happened. When the same request starts appearing across different tables and different days, we pay attention. That constant conversation with the people actually eating the food is more useful to us than trying to predict every trend from inside a meeting room.
Bavdhan is where we learned to listen. Aundh is what listening builds when it gets a blank canvas. And the loop hasn’t stopped; everything Aundh teaches us will flow right back into Bavdhan too. A new dish that works, a service improvement, an operational lesson or simply a better way of doing something doesn’t belong to one outlet. That’s the whole point of being two outlets run by one restless team: they make each other better.
Come Eat
If you’re in Aundh or anywhere near it, come see us. Bring someone. Grab the spot by the vertical garden, order a bowl and something continental, and tell us honestly what you think. Come for breakfast, a casual lunch, an evening catch-up or simply because you don’t feel like cooking. We’re building Platesman around the way people actually eat, so your experience is part of what teaches us what comes next. We’ll use it; we always do.
And if you’re a Bavdhan regular reading this, come meet the sibling. You’ll recognise the food, the philosophy and the Platesman approach, but the room has a personality of its own. Same food you love, new room to love it in.
Platesman Aundh Eatery
Radha Co. Op. Ho. Society, Seasons Road, Marutirao Gaikwad Nagar, Aundh, Pune, Maharashtra 411067.
Open Monday to Sunday, 8:00 AM to 11:00 PM. Call 09175469189 for reservations. Also in Bavdhan, and on Zomato and Swiggy when the couch wins.
