There’s a lot happening on the Rua de Ourem creek, well not quite
on it, but in the periphery of streets outside and within the Latin quarter of
Panjim. Boutique stores, music shops, a store for audiophiles and then the
café’s. Perhaps the biggest assimilation of European charm caressing the laid
back peppy Latin vibe on streets marked with graffiti and history, frayed
romantically just on the edges with the newness of modern and chic stores and
coffee hubs have made this part of Panjim, very Parisian.
The world comes here. Folks from Venezuela to Mexico, to Italy
and Slovenia and of course Italy and Britain roam on the streets of Fontainhas
, around the post office block and Sao Tome, consumed by the colour of the
homes, sunlight leaping off the tiles, the chapels and churches. Leaning
against the doors of homes that just draw you in, some actually fall into homes
if the doors open and the resident wants to go out. While some locals do
grumble gently at the buzz that rises in quiet neighbourhoods, it’s never more
than that, safe in the knowledge that like migratory birds, each tourist flock
will arrive and leave
And then there are the café’s. The Latin quarter has always had
taverns and the traditional cafes like Tatos and Café Bhosle ( though outside
the quarter but near enough) and some tea shops, but never the Manhattan,
Paris, Rome kinds where an espresso and a chair on a pavement on a street with
people passing by, are all transfixed in one frame.
Friends from abroad or those who have moved here have started
making these linkages sitting in these cafes, without even being prodded.
References have been made to Cafes in France and in New York like Café de la
Paix, Le Select in Paris and Third Rail coffee in the Village in Manhattan.
It’s easy to know why. At Café de la Paix near the Paris opera,
writers like Guy de Maupassant and Emile Zola sat and wrote. The French
government in 1975, has made this coffee shop, a setting for many paintings,
films and poems, a historical site. Here history and atmosphere is added to
each cup.
At Le Select in Montparnasse, in Paris, Henry Miller, Hemingway,
Picasso, and F. Scott Fitzgerald all took their coffee breaks and made the café
as iconic as its legendry patrons.
The Bombay Coffee Roasters (which has a branch in faraway
Anjuna), Blue Tokai and the very chic and eclectic, coffee co-working space
Café Rasa, gets its fair share of such folks obviously not of the same vintage
and fame. But the vibe is the same. Increasingly, people are moving out of
offices or not moving into them, spending days in these surroundings.
The alteration of the demographic mix in Panjim, which always
had the local residents, government employees, shop and store owners, and lunch
times used to be about selecting the best thali place, if one wasn’t going
home, has been good for the town. Yours truly has happily flipped between a
fish thali at Anand Ashram or a spicy biriyani made by the all women crew at
Pakeeza or a pork vindaloo at Venite, with a rucola salad with candied walnuts
and feta at Blue Tokai. And if there is a Café Bhosle for puri and mushroom
bhaji and sweet tea , there is Carlos Noronha’s very European Caravela ( more
about this in a subsequent piece on Panjim’s breakfast journeys), which serves
a full and complete English breakfast with beans, hash browns and tomatoes with
your bacon eggs and sausage. And yet you could mix the traditional with the
modern at the Bombay Coffee roasters at the Old Quarter hostel where a back
packers breakfast of toast, eggs and jam, as well as a Goan breakfast of bhaji,
pao and samosa procured from the next door traditional café is served.
Meanwhile Café Rasa, on the water front in a building surrounded
by the oldest of stationery, music shops and eateries, is a sign of how the old
and the new blend and co-exist.
And up on the hill in Altinho in one of the prettiest spaces
anywhere in the world for a café, the Sunapranta art gallery, is the much loved
Café Bodega which, to many is our extended living room where healthy comfort
food and pure indulgence tango, each having a legion of followers. So if it’s
Eggs Benedict, Turkish poached eggs with chilly oil and shrimps, wrapped with
loose curd, or waffle and honey on one day and leafy salads and Carrot Apple,
Ginger juice the next, there shouldn’t be any cause for complaint. In any case,
even without meaning to, one ambles in there to meet Vandu (Vandana Naik), who
is far less visible than before as she has deep dived into her greatest
passion, baking.
London or New York right here in Panjim.
These places are some of the milestones and surely not a
definite or comprehensive list, which just goes to show how much the coffee and
the Cafe culture has mushroomed in the heart of Panjim.
Surely, this town of mine, never fails to surprise, endear or
reach out and just say “I’ll always be there”, constantly reshaping and
reinventing without its original foundation- at least in the old quarter,
around the post office- its laid back charm, ever ebbing.
But the amazing thing about each of these places is the consistency of the coffee. If Carlos Noronha sources his fresh beans and grinds and serves them, so does Blue Tokai, Rasa. The Bombay Coffee Roasters serves coffee with its breakfast and that’s a better deal than ordering coffee separately. But suffice to say, it’s never been as easy to get coffee as good as Paris