By Tara Narayan

A LOT of blues are catching up with me although this is season of fun and frolic in Goa and soon Ingo's Saturday Night Bazaar will open at Arpora! I confess to a sneaky fondness for the seasonal eateries or restaurants or cafeterias run by resident foreigners in Goa along the Aguada-Candolim-Calangute-Bage-Anjuna and further up the beach belt and that's because they serve some of the best Continental veggie food (non-veggie food too), also Lebanese and Turkish and French and Italian… during the season as a resident Goan I find that Goan food takes a backseat! On second thoughts, no, that's unfair. Most foreign and domestic tourists revel in the seafood offerings of several restaurants specializing in Goan seafood and seafood done with an austere yet rich olive oil-garlic-black pepper-assorted fresh green herbs dressing is to die for! The simplest recipes demand the least hard work but the freshest and purest organic ingredients…and a deft hand. Well, I've been doing a bit of eating out and must draw your attention to the Goa Tourism people's new floating baby – the Mandovi Blue , Goa's first floating restaurant which opened for business on Sept.27. Floating restaurants are a big hit anywhere in the world provided the food and service is good.

A broad the 'Mandovi Blue'. . . Goa's first floating restaurant. (Inset) Early birds get the upper deck!

Unable to resist the thought of water, water all around me, stars above in a cool sable black sky and twinkling lights in the distance, I went along to catch the Mandovi Blue last week (Santa Monica jetty, below Mandovi Bridge, where all the other boats do their evening trips down and up the river). I guess with louder competition all around it's not easy to compete – most tourists do the song-dance-freak out merriment routine round on one of the cruise boats out here (and once is enough!). The Mandovi Blue offers gentler fare and holds out the promise of becoming addictive fare. It offers only cruise dinners in the evenings till the witching hour and if the wind is blowing it's a soothing experience. They actually cook their menu aboard the boat, according to Shashi Shetty (of Utsav and Sanskruti and Aces Pub in Panaji)….go and take a look at the neat kitchen quarters on your way up to the top deck. Ah, that is the catch, please know that there is an upper deck and here are the prized seats right under the stars. Order and relax and keep your fingers crossed for a few breezes, okay, except that from now onwards the nights will get cooler and cooler and my favourite season will have arrived.

I hate to say it but the décor is a bit garish with all those red cherry bulbs festooned everywhere constantly distracting the eyes with their seemingly romantic but atrocious winking! The furniture is heavyweight and looks like it's been spared from some musty, dusty government quarters…but overlook this for the food and the smiling waiters (who, incidentally, wear the most amazing uniforms with mine capes slung around their neck, hey, the guys are probably roasting in them!). You may order Goan food and the seafood is excellently done, but there's also a bit of non-Goan Indian, Chinese, Continental and Thai, ask for the Manglorean specialities like sukha chicken, kori roti (i.e. chicken in coconut gravy with rice flakes) if you're in a mood to treat your palate to something out of the ordinary. I asked for Vin Ballet (red) and to my surprise got it! See, they're beginning to stock quality Indian wines too increasingly in Goan restaurants. Friends with me ordered seafood and pronounced it very good, a vegetarian amidst us didn't complain about the dal or kofta…but the tandoori roti became as hard as cardboard too quickly for goodness sake. Good flour make for a good roti and that is basic (and by good flour I do not mean 100 percent refined flour). Except for scraps of roti there wasn't a crumb left on the plates. The fruit salad laced in custard was superlatively good and generously portioned…I'm going back on a blue evening just for the fruit salad alone. Even if you have to hang around on the lower deck with your drinks make a reservation for the upper deck for dining. And do tip the boys for all the hard work they do going to and fro and up and down!

Mandovi Blue can do with a bit of easing up on the sleazy pink interior décor but hey, it's a great idea. Wish the boat would run as a plain and simple cafeteria round the clock…go any time, cruise up and down the Mandovi River and have breakfast, lunch or dinner! Not too fancy, just the basics delivered without fuss, I think the GTDC needs to buy a boat of its (I think this is just a part-time hired boat to do dinners) for floating restaurants are an idea which can never bomb, they've proved to be popular the world over. Of course, if the Mandovi Blue is here to stay there'll be many more players who will want permission to colonize various rivers in river-rich Goa and I'm not sure if all the garbage will not go into the rivers. I saw plenty of garbage and litter floating by while aboard the Mandovi Blue but one of the service boys said, no, not guilty, none of the cruise boats dump their garbage in the river, the garbage is dumped by parties further up the river. Isn't it illegal to dump restaurant garbage or any other garbage in any water body in Goa???

GUJU ROTLI, ANYBODY ?
SOMETIMES my Gujarati tastebuds catch up with me and I pine for someone to make me a wholesome Gujarati rotli …wafer thin, hot, a hint of crispness… a whisper of fragrant home-made ghee (there're stores retailing packets of rotli in town but they're smeared with vanaspati i.e. hydrogenated vegetable ghee)! It always amazes me how in all kinds of restaurants in Goa one may find agreeable seafood, meat or vegetable dishes, but the dozen odd assorted Indian breads offered on the menu are disagreeable, disappointing if not a total disaster…be they the ever popular tandoori roti (desirable and agreeable only if it is made of atta or wholewheat flour, it very rarely is), or paratha (terribly fried and stodgy), or kulcha (can be leathery soft), or naan (can turn to lumpy globs in the mouth),or the fine velvety roomali roti ( they may melt in the mouth with little effort but they too are made of pure refined white maida i.e. a refined carbohydrate you'd be wise to shun)….occasionally somewhere the menu will list tava roti or chapatti i.e. wholewheat phulka or Gujarati-styled rotli. This last is a piece de resistance but hard to find for money or for love (for love only in a Guju home). I know there're a few Gujarati eateries in town i.e. Panaji……but even here it's hard to be happy with the rotli (the thin chapattis come either three-quarter cooked or half-cooked or one-quarter cooked or cooked with hard burnt edges!). Last week my hunt for a decent rotli ended when I discovered this no-nonsense hole-in-the-wall eatery called Navrang (walk around Navelkar Arcade to find it, it's down the road to Café Central). This is a small-time Gujarati thali eatery pure and simple. The thali meal (Rs.45) offers the most decent rotli in town, scrumptious dal with a wee hint of sweetness, a beans or peas gravy dish, a dry vegetable of the day (cooked in groundnut oil), small bowl of curd, tablespoon kachumbar ( chopped salad), pretty good dash of mango pickle and papad, and a glass of refreshingly plain chaas or buttermilk. You may ask for more rotli , and more…more of anything, for an extra small price. A board up on the wall informs patrons that they use only whole wheat flour for making rotli and the food is cooked in pure groundnut oil…thank you. Naturally I packed up some rotli to take home! If you have a yen for a pure Gujarati thali meal and don't mind eating in the company of men cheek by jowl…check out Navrang! Or take friends if you want a four-seater table all for yourself.

Which is the best restaurant and watering hole down Highway No.17 on the way to Margao??? Answer, next week!

Back