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150 km for a rice plate...
By Frederick Noronha
IT MUST have been about the most bizarre assignment in my freelance career
of eight years. But guest-editor David Blamey's idea was alluring. He was
giving me the chance to review -- without obligation to the restaurant -- a
hole-in-the-wall and good value-for-money place I would have anyway gone
to myself.
Food critics -- a breed that hardly exists in Goa -- tend to look at
those outlets rolling out the red carpet, and wanting some cheap
publicity. Someone said there's no free meal? Anyway, this writer's main
qualification is that he lacks the experience as a food critic....
So, to distant Canacona (pronounced Kaankon, on the local Konkani-speaking
tongue) we went. It's at one extreme end of Goa, as any self-respecting
traveller would know, and is where everyone heads after Anjuna got too noisy
and Baga-Calangute-Candolim got overcrowded.
It takes time to get there. The consolation is that its far faster to travel
in slow Goa today than it was even just one generation ago. Knowing where
express buses leave Panjim and Margao helps. If nothing works, just catch-up
on pending reading material as you head down from North Goa.
'Hotel Mangalore' is by the roadside about a kilometre away from Canacona's
main tiny town, Chaudi. The road in question is National Highway 17, which
passes through villages and, in parts, gets abysmally narrow. Or quaintly
so, depending on your perspective on the subject.
It's close to Char Rasta (literally, Four Roads, the point where they meet)
and is not to be confused with another restaurant of the same name, that
lies closer to the petrol pump.
Don't get taken in by the 'hotel' tag. In Indian English you don't need to
have rooms on let to qualify you for this term. Even a tiny 'chai shop'
(roadside tea stall) can, and often does, grandiloquently, call itself a
'hotel'. It simply means a restaurant. Even if it's a ram-shackled version of
one.
Mangalore is a coastal city under 400 kms further south, in the neighbouring
Karnataka state. Like Goa, it shares a love for sea-food, fish-curries --
though with a rather distinct flavour, which would be certainly obvious to
the local tongue. Such subtleties would be lost on someone from outside the
region.
Hotel Mangalore is a modest place, with a long menu, and worth-recommending
dishes.
It's hastily-scrawled board announces a 'deluxe fish c. rice' (the 'c' is
for curry) at Rs 80, a semi-deluxe version for half that price, and a
'local' equivalent for one-fourth. Obviously chicken is its specialty.
Many local businesses see this as propping up the local bars that
proliferate all over in a Goa who's easy-on-liquor policy reflects its
former Portuguese legacy.
Of course, Canacona is also surrounded with fishing villages. It has the
seashore and also rivers like the Galgibag and Talpona. Fish preparations
are the pivot that hold the rice-curry staple, and fish can often be a
conversation point here as elsewhere in Goa.
This is the kind of place that locals eat at. But it probably has
aspirations to attract the tourist thronging to nearby Palolem beach, some
three kilometres away. The make-believe shack before the 'hotel' --
thatched coconut shacks are more a beachside reality -- perhaps reflects
this dream. Liquor is served only outside, in the 'shack'.
But it's food is surely good enough to lure a wider clientele.
As we grew talking, the subject veered to Delhi bellies and Goa gastros...
the unsettling impact of good food on a perfect holiday. Of course, in
places like these food comes in warm -- if not hot -- and there's little
cause for fear. Water is something else; but then is the
environmentally-hazardous plastic bottle a real option? Besides, sea-food
that's not properly cleaned -- almost every self-respecting Goan housewife
or cook knows how to do this adequately -- needs to be treated with care.
This place has nearly a dozen-and-half chicken dishes. One actually
counted. Fish (prices not mentioned on menu, the local market for fish
fluctuates like the stock-market... depending on the weather and
tourist-fuelled demand) and prawn are over two dozen in number.
Then there are veg dishes and rice items too, besides fruit juices.
Of course, the food here is local with a coastal Manglorean slant. Don't
expect the watered down, bland versions that are aimed primarily at the
foreign tourists in more 'happening' places.
"Eighty to 85 percent visitors are locals," says owner Valerian Viegas. He
comes from a village near Mangalore, worked as a waiter in nearby Margao,
and then launched this small place with "zero capital", his terms. "I didn't
know to cook, but just saw others and learnt," he explains in the local
lingo, Konkani. He can afford to spill out the beans; the food tastes good.
We opted for the semi-delux meal... but got tempted and changed that order
to the delux fish curry-rice midway. While working on three types of fish --
fried in 'rava' -- and curries garnished with what seem to be herbs to the
British eye, there were chapaties and parathas to dip into. Viegas
recommended a prawn dish with green masala. He offered to show us how
Mangaloreans fry their fish, but as we animatedly exchanged views, the dish
had been already served. It ended with a spoonful of 'baddixep'
(aniseed/fennel) roasted warm and fresh.
One's idea of a working lunch. It could have been much more elaborate, but
this itself was filling.... Cost: Rs 156.
Incidentally, Mangalorean packet-curries (in powder form) for fish or meat
are often so tasty to the Goan tongue. One cookbook, written by a
Mangalorean Christian called Isidore Coelho, taught the first steps of
cooking to many Goan just-married women across generations.... Valerian
spoke about the Bapat masala ("best for the Mangalorean style of pork").
This is a Goa which is suddenly seeing many more influences on it's already
quaint East-West mix of flood. Globalisation might not be such a bad-word to
mouth in such a context!
--
Frederick Noronha * Freelance Journalist * Goa * India 832.2409490
BYTESFORALL www.bytesforall.org * GNU-LINUX http://linuxinindia.pitas.com
Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Mobile +9822 122436 (Goa) * Saligao Goa India
Writing with a difference ... on what makes *the * difference
--
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more
interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim ."
E. W. Dijkstra
