If Arabica doesn’t wake you up robusta surely will. And does AA
rated do for you or AAA rated? Coffee beans that is. Even before the famed
Rooster, that gallinaceous character who announces the arrival of dawn in most
Goan villages and towns as he crows, the universe of coffee beans and coffee
artists are at work. Especially in Panjim, where this still little town, is now
really waking up to smell the coffee.
And before the cock does crow, the steady soft mellow roar of
beans getting grounded, water getting poured over fresh powder is heard. French
presses are cleaned for plungers to settle the coffee, steel containers are
placed on stoves and hundreds of cups poured over and over, in cafes, hostels,
coffee shops, each in quaint settings, where world class coffee is topped ,not
really with milk, but with conversations.
Yes the truth is out- in black (if its espresso) and white (if
its latte). Panjim is indeed on the world map for coffee. Hear it from
travelers making a pit stop.
Tucked away in Fontainhas, literally at the precipice of where
the hurly burly of Panjim’s daily life turns into a narrow lane into Rua 31 de
Janeiro , where time and pace goes back by fifty years, where the Latin quarter
begins. That’s where the Noronha family lives, Carlos and his wife and sons,
Carlos Junior and Cyrus and the while the jury is still out, there is growing
consensus that the Café this family runs, with rooms for lodgers, Caravela, is
the best place to park if you need great coffee.
Well, the tag hasn’t come easy. Up the narrow steps of the café,
through the gorgeous cottage is the “laboratory”. That is where the big roaster
is kept, the simple magical contraption that transforms green raw beans, into
aromatic coffee beans which plunge out of the giant container after getting
roasted.
Watching the process is fascinating. The green beans twirl and
swirl and gradually change colour, almost like the blossoming of a flower. When
the beans get optimum heat, touching about 115 degrees plus, they turn from
pale green to dark brown, each filled with flavour and fervor. Then they drop
down from the level above into a vessel below with blades and rotate till they
cool down.
Watching this process, in this café, the only one with a
roaster, in a setting which could be in the early 1900’s, was a confluence of
the ancient and the new, with charm that is transfixed.
Coffee lovers are indeed a breed apart, both the creators and
the consumers. There is Carlos, the patriarch, who while running a Café Caravella,
from within his home, figured that a great breakfast reaches pinnacles of
greatness with good coffee. They were lucky with the beans they got, till
Carlos deep dived into the art and craft of coffee procuring and sourcing the
best beans from Coorg. Now they have the AAA and the AA Arabica, good robusta
and the blends that emerge plus myriad other brands, in a baffling range and
combinations.
We realize little that these are touches that actually endear
places to people. For instance, the turning point on his journey of upping the
ante in coffee began when he overheard tourists having breakfast in his café
chatting in Portuguese that this was the best coffee they had in Goa. It is
then that he decided to go the whole hog and source and roast his beans, a task
which his son Carlos (junior) handles while Cyrus is a the prince of the
kitchen whipping up great full English breakfasts and soft sandwiches embedded
in fluffy croissants
There are cafes dotting the by lanes of Fontainhas and around.
Though they don’t roast the beans, they do grind them, each place stocking a
variety of beans. In some places, like the Blue Tokai Café behind the post
office, at Sao Tome, another place for conversations around a big tree in a
courtyard or the cozy insides, they will grind a afresh for your cuppa if you
so desire, with your ricotta salad with caramelised walnuts or tuna melt
sandwiches.
On the other side of Fontainhas, in the main inside road
connecting this gorgeous quarter to Mala and beyond are two quaint hostels, the
Old Quarter ( also known as Bombay Coffee Roaster) and the relatively new White
Balcao. This is where people hang in the open spaces, chat, read, play music
and drink liters of coffee. While both these places offer coffee with your
breakfast of either toast, eggs and fruit or the goan pao bhaji and samosa,
which is Americano, the White Balcao, a gem of a lodging created by the Pune
based couple Alok and Swati, offers a slightly more eclectic variety. The
architecture of White Balcao can pass off as Portuguese but it has greco- roman
and Spanish elements, giving you the gentle caress of a Spanish hacienda locked
in matrimony with a Goan balcao.
During a coffee chat one morning, which became a roundtable of
folks, there was a lady from Luxemburg, about to ease out from practicing
psychiatry to something more evolved. While the search is on, a longish stay in
Fontainhas with coffee, friends and chats, is as good a transition she could
dream of. A young man from Russian was also there, escaping the cold of St
Petersburg but also wondering why his homeland is seeing less snow and higher
temperatures. Giving us company was a soul traveller from Hyderabad called
Guru, who makes APPs user friendly and can do it from Fontainhas or Finland,
for clients from Vizag or Melbourne. He has stayed on and on and may never
leave. And he wants and gets his two coffees as soon as he wakes.
Coffee does make the world go round. But it also brings it closer. Panjim is now waking up to sell the coffee.