They have no frills and they don’t need any. They are pit stops
of daily joi de vivre, the exultation of the spirit of Panjim, they
still beat time and change and stand as lighthouses. They are home for kindred
spirits, for those longing for slivers of Panjim, hoping that its street side
bars and cafes are saved from extinction.
This week yours truly hugged the spaces that have been a part of
life for a decade and a half. The streets of Campal and St Inez, which if you
give it a thought, are almost Parisian in spirit. The cafes are mainly on the
road from where you can watch Panjim pass by from morning, starting with the
mellow mornings and the light chatter which slowly rises to a crescendo as the
cafes get filled, the newspapers are read, the state and its problems get
dissected and hundreds of paos, pois and bhajis are
consumed before the crowd trickles out, making their way home or to work. The
tide rises again in the afternoon as a sea of thalis are prepared in
restaurants all over.
If you sit in any of the old world cafeterias and walk around a
bit, work is what you do between breakfast and lunch and then between your
siesta and dinner with “high tea” thrown in. And we aren’t British, but our kalwa
bhajjis or kalwa pao, mixed bhajjis, bhajjias and its
assorted ilk, battle their scones and wafer thin cucumber and egg sandwiches,
and we dare say, come up trumps very often, over the high teas of ole blighty.
Over the years, this column of wandering around Goa, netting its
wafting aromas, like a bee catcher on the prowl, yours truly has hopefully kept
alive this connect. These writings are merely a reportage and an affirmation of
the symbiotic relationship the people of Panjim have with their favourite
places.
And while the charm is almost holistic, the long lasting cafes
and hole-in-the-wall restaurants, keep us going. Let’s pick three of them this
time.
It’s past 8 pm and the Panjim has moved from dusk to late
evening. The facade of the magnificent St Inez Church is lit. On the street is
the flow of traffic, folks winding up their day, or some even beginning theirs.
The very rotund Moses Pinto strolls into the bar to see if all is well. He
switches on his media player and selects his music displayed on his smart TV,
the only allowance of modernity in a bar which oozes a charm offensive of
quaintness.
Pinto Bar has about six to seven odd tables in a tiny room not
larger than a kitchen. And there’s a kitchen of course at the back, the
laboratory from where Moses Pinto’s wife and chief chef talks to us through her
offerings. As the night wears on, all you hear are satiated sounds of folks
whose taste buds are reaching such a crescendo, where words surrender to just
phonetic exhilaration. Where do we begin? Pork solantolem with its
succulent fat rightly cooked, chicken cafreal with its divine paste sinking
into the chicken like osmosis, pork roast which is a stand-alone toast to the
divinity of this cuisine, tongue roast, to be had as it is or inside a pao or
a poi and the choris pao were the choris and the fat
actually soak the bread with an explosion of sausage flavours.
The feni is fresh and so is the urrack during the season. The
pace is slow and conversations are not. From a small snack outlet doing fish
cutlets and choris pao in the 1980’s Moses came into his own (and not many of
us who are hitched in some form or the other can say that) when Mrs Pinto happened
at the turn of the century. Jointly they produced food, till Moses went on to
run the restaurant at Club Vasco and returned in 2011 to run Pinto bar also as
a full-fledged restaurant. We are blessed.
The two other places shall be briefly dealt with but a larger
ditty on them is definitely due. The pride of Hanumant, whose City Pride
opposite Taj Vivanta, is like a home kitchen. Get your rice from home and pick
up a packet of any curry and your lunch is done. But if you are not on the run,
then do try their top class butter chicken and of course the Goan stuff. The
thali, with lepo and tarle fish, prawn curry, fish ambotik, kismur,
tisrio and solkadi can’t get any better and will compete
seriously with the ten best thalis of Panjim
And finally last pick of the day is Sagar in its new avatar
‘Crossroads, above Geeta Bakery, itself a destination. Buddy Barnabe Sapeco,
has transformed his quaint Sagar hotel into a hip bar and restaurant with a hip
name Crossroads. While his signature thalis with fruit salad rock, a new chef
who does Malaysian food has literally added to the spice. More power to all
these folks.
