There’s a scar on the face of Goenkarponn, a scar which
several specialists are battling hard to remove. They are the preservers, the
restorers, who go about their business and craft very quietly.
So what’s cooking? Quite simply, the work of Goa’s culinary artists,
from the simple folk who cook at home for the family to those who run tavernas
and restaurants, still working their daily magic with Goan spices ingredients,
and fresh vegetables, meat and sea food, to give us Goan flavours, nay, a slice
of Goan life, the leitmotif of civilization in this land.
In this sea washed landscape where the sun and the ocean embrace in the
horizons over yonder, where village roads meander through the canopy of palm
trees, fast depleting, where the forests explode with the flavours of cashew
apples, where the song of the birds are accompanied with someone playing the
guitar on his balcao in an interior village, there lurks a destroyer. He who
dilutes, destroys, manipulates, wrecks, alters and causes death to Goan food,
cutting it to pieces and feeding it to either the unsuspecting or the ignorant
or the careless.
One of the nerve centers of this destruction are “shacks” on the beach
who purport to make Goan food. These make shift kitchens have been completely
taken over ( with no offence even remotely intended) by “cooks” from many North
Indian and eastern states. Each menu is a copy paste of the other with curry,
xacuti, vindaloo and sorpotel thrown in whose taste and appearance have very
remote semblance of what the dish is even supposed to be.
And for those who do not know the difference between a cafreal and
kachori, the first time initiation into “goan” food becomes a disaster, with
the consumer blissfully unaware and unexposed to the real thing. And then he
goes back with this lingering taste of what he thinks is cooked in all Goan
homes, which is an absolute bastardisation of what is meant to be the pride and
honour of Goan culture, its food.
This is the time we must salute those who are sticking to the age old
route map with no deviations. From the spare ribs to the choris pao to the
vindloo, fejoada, and solantolem, Moses Pinto of Pinto Bar Panjim has been a
disciplined soldier of authenticity,. His drawing room is his restaurant and he
does it all himself with a little help from family. He cooks what he has always
eaten and it shows, both in his plates of food and on his jovial rotund self,
with smiles lighting up his eyes and filtering through his copious moustache,
light on his feet and music always playing wherever he is.
And then there is the trio of Goan gems all in a line in Panjim,
George’s Bar, Club Vasco da Gama and Clube Nacionale, which were signposts of
Goenkarponn and are now lighthouses or sentinels guarding the ramparts of Goan
cuisine, as the world crumbles all around with fast food joints, and “fushion
food” as Panjim becomes hip.
George’s Bar, always there, never forgotten by ancient ponjekars at the
nerve centre of Panjim’s pulse, the Church square, crowded by new age
restaurants, still sanding out without compromising on true to kind Goan food.
Each of these places have their signature sign offs. For George’s bar, it has
to be the beef xacuti, the sausage fry and the pork balchao.
Messias Tavares, the entertainer par excellence, the chef and the
affable ring master of old fashioned street entertainment now runs Club Vasco
Da Gama, once the watering hole and place of banter of Portuguese government
servants. It’s now more of a restaurant with the feel of a club with large
doorways looking into the Panjim municipal gardens. Most of you have spent
umpteen afternoons and evening here but this is for those who have missed out
on the real gems of living and growing up in Goa. Tavares will take you to
Spain, Mexico, Brazil Portugal, Goa and back or any other way around with his
band of dances and entertainment, but when it comes to food, he will does not
leave Goa, or at best Portugal. He does the balchao as well as bacalhau and
everything in between
And then in the same line, there is the restored, Clube Nacionale,
risen like the phoenix from the ashes (and literally so). It takes you back to
the 1930’s, when Panjim’s charm was on a natural offensive, revelry was worn on
the sleeves and food and drink, were consumed with joy and in copious
quantities. From its choris pao onwards, this is where those longing for a
taste of real nostalgia go to. There are no advertisements or blogs or
Instagram of Facebook posts about Clube Nacionale and no PR machinery to drive
it. Just the strength of memories of those who simply know what is real.
But the battle is being fought. And one is pleased to note that some
relatively younger chefs and practitioners of the ancient art of Goan coking
are going back to their roots even as they are creating dishes which look
different. Young Chef Avinash Martins of Cavatina Benaulim has created a Goan
tapas menu, out of research of over two years. He learnt how Mackerals were
smoked by fishermen on the beach and eaten, their first meal from their fresh
catch, how curry kept overnight intensifies and has a special flavor. From the
Ross Omelette to Upid to Koiloreo, the roots of Goan cuisine has been gently
extracted, nay tapped, in a connect which is so missed in the manner in which
food is conceived prepared, served and sampled these days.
We remain hopeful, that all is not lost. More power to our kodi.
