From the long playing records, all lined up behind his bar,
you could hear Frank Sinatra leaping out to do a jig and a shake, or Harry
Belafonte bring Jamaica Farewell and the high seas to your table, each LP
record, many of different sizes and shapes, take you to those times when being
‘gay’ was a state of mind, times when Goa too had its own languid pace when the
sound of the sea mingled with the soft tune of the flute and the slow beats of
the djembe.
Arnaldo Menezes, the collector of such records, is as
vintage as his collections. At 92, he is ramrod straight and long playing
records are not his only collections. From across the villages of Goa, he has
perhaps one of the finest collections of garrafões, the glass carboys that
store feni, each a proud keeper of Goa’s best elixir. For years, and at 92 that
means a lot, Arnaldo has done just that, collected stuff- pieces of furniture,
records, garrafões and other assorted curios, each a reflection of a time that
has actually stood still. In Arnaldo’s life yesterday is today and today will
be tomorrow.
Arnaldo then sealed his love and fascination for garrafões
with his quaint garden restaurant named -what else- Garrafão-on the edge of the
main road that connects Raia to Margao. The inside roads lead to the verdant
fields, country homes and Curtorim over yonder. Garrafão was always a project
of love, run with clockwork efficiency and warmth by his daughter Lynette
Fernandes and was shut down when Arnaldo’s health was failing and after a gap
of eighteen months restarted a couple of weeks ago.
The long playing records, the garrafões and other delightful
assortments have found their way to the bar of the Garrafão, which is an
extension of the family home. Lynette and her husband, himself a hospitality
professional, live in her ancestral home of the Menezes.
The restarting of this small family run outlet is a
significant story. It’s yet another little triumph of the quintessential Goa
buried under the onslaught of fine dining restaurants with big money backing
and glitzy PR machinery.
On a balmy Sunday evening last week, we dropped in to meet
Lynette and daddy Arnaldo and check out the reopened Garrafão. Some of the Raia
and adjoining locals were there, here was a musician with a mouth organ and a
small djembe, one of my favourite percussion instruments.
It was a good vibe, the rhythms emanating from conversations
and food- actually conversations about food. As a deviation from the past
Lynette has made some delightful innovations to the menu by taking the concept
of having a drink with food, to having a drink in food, and cooked live.
A tiny live station with a mini stove arrives with a bowl of
raw shrimps. While it waits the onion, corn, olive oil and butter go into the
pan and whipped, some ginger and garlic go in obviously and then the shrimps
make an entry. After seven to eight minutes of cooking, the preparation is
taken out and the tomatoes go in, always cooked separately because they cook
the fastest. An early mix makes the tomato overpower the natural aroma of the
shrimps. Then after the tomato finally meets the shrimp, it is all flambéed in
Tequila. When all that meets your taste buds, you feel a flirtatious mingling
of the shrimps with butter and the slight kick of the tequila
with the soft music and the slow beat of
the djembe interspersed with the sound of the flute (or was it the mouth organ)
in the background.
The chicken ‘cafreal’ too gets drunk at Garrafão as it waits
to be slow cooked flambéed with Vodka while the sauce is liquidated with
brandy. Nothing escapes the fire including the bananas fried in sugar and
flambéed of course. And yet there are other surprises. The Goan style pork
chops with Goan sauce were not flambéed but they put you on fire.
A glass of fine feni, refilled repeatedly, dipped with a
slit green chilli and a dash of lime juice, kept me company, sourced from
Caetano who grows and distils on his farm at Manora between Raia and Nuvem.
Sometimes I wonder why garrafõesare needed at all. Because excellent feni never
really stays in them for long when there are good feni drinkers consuming the
elixir all the time.
Yes, it was a gentle evening, from the pages of an era gone
by, a bit of sepia, a lot of it in black and white with food that stands the
test of all eras and chats that are real. When sadness engulfs the new Goa,
Lynette and Arnaldo remind you that it is not Goa, we have changed and yet it’s
easy to get our Goa back, by measuring life in beautiful garrafões and flambéed
shrimps, and inspired by Harry Belafonte, singing “akey rice, salt fish are
nice and the feni is fine any time of the year”.
