We all love to eat.. don’t we? Travelling is not complete without experiencing local food. Here, I will quickly review a few amazing places to eat in Goa where we had amazing gastronomic experiences. Local cuisine says a lot about the culture and essence of a place and it is unique. The wife had put in a lot of effort in selection of the places to eat in Goa and carefully fit them into our itinerary. She is really good at it. We mostly had a seafood based traditional goan cuisine. Xacutti, goan curry with rice, crab masala, lobster, king fish fry, calamari were some of the dishes which we really liked. The traditional foods were easy on spices and oil and had no after-effects to our stomach. The last thing everyone wants is to fall sick while holidaying.
Places to eat in Goa: North Goa
Fat Fish, Baga
Located near Baga-Arambol road. Amazing food, lovely ambience, thalis are special, serves generous quantity; has ample parking space; which was a relief in a place like Goa. Food is yummy, moderately priced. Total value for money. I wish we could go there once more an try some other food in the menu there.
Fisherman’s Cove, Candolim
The first time I saw this place, while driving to this place, I was awestuck with the ambience. It is beautifully designed, hutment type joint in a posh locality, lovely food, lively ambience. The only place where we went twice for dinner, easy on the pocket, live music and one of the service manager(bald and handsome) dances really well and picks enthusiastic ladies for a couple dance to the live music tunes. It was really a treat to watch. I really enjoy live performance over DJ music.
Pousada by the beach, Calangute
A wonderful place by the beachside. It is slightly off the usual fanfare. Celebrities like Priyanka Chopra/Nick Jonas, Deepika Padukone, Varun Dhawan and many others visit this place whenever they come to Goa. This one had a cover charge of Rs. 1000/- per person which could be adjusted with foodbill.
The food was good but expensive. The owner was a very nice and friendly person who looks a bit like Milind Soman. He is 60+ and still looks extremely fit. The staff were well trained and polite. There were two cute friendly dogs- a golden retriever and one Labrador. The place has a very nice feel. We clicked a few great pics here. I am trying to reproduce one of the scenes here overlooking the sea at the background through my art. Its under process.
Mikey’s place, Candolim
The place is similar to fisherman’s cove. I had yummy crab masala here. Delicious food, moderately priced with live rock band… Yeah!! One of the otherwise very well behaved waiter almost forced my wife to give a 5 star rating on google then and there itself which I did not like and scolded him in a sweet way. He said sorry. Its not right to manipulate on ratings. Reviews should be honest. Other than that, it was a pleasurable experience.
Mayan beach club, Anjuna
A newly opened cafe cum lounge bar located in Anjuna beach (rocky part) near Purple Martini. It is not yet in google maps yet. The best of the best in terms of ambience. It felt like dream place. A must visit for a wonderful and memorable sunset over pizza, coffee and a brownie.
Yeah!! We are that boring, hunting for tea/coffee in a lounge bar LOL. The view from this place was so amazing that I video called my mom, sister and a few friends to share the view with them. I am a music nazi and I cant help it. It is probably because I had played quite a number of live shows during my college days. Now, I cannot withstand bad music/ bad sound frequency especially which we experienced in Baga beach shacks.
I prefer live music over DJ. In Mayan, instrumental songs were been played by DJ Nikhil. I am forced to write here that the speaker systems in Mayan were of top notch quality and the frequency was quite soothing even when it was loud enough. The speakers were strategically placed in an outside seating area with a dolby surround feel. Hats off to the audio engineer who installed them. Also, DJ Nikhil played some groovy tunes from his EDM collection (Organic Sound). Some of these songs were played as backing tracks in John Wick-4 fight sequences. We exchanged a few pleasantries related to the music.
Places to eat in Goa: South Goa
Martin’s Corner, Betalbatim
The most expensive place we had in our entire trip. It was a Friday night and needless to say fully crowded. People were shouting so much, I don’t know why! We could not talk properly with our friends. Food was amazing. The exotic foods like crabs and lobsters were highly overpriced compared to other places in Goa.
I wanted to have crab. My friends wanted to have Lobster. But, we had to choose any one because of the price. I sacrificed my wishes that night. We got friendly with a waiter from Odisha. He shared some back-end stories of such places and how they are being exploited. We felt slightly bad after hearing this.
Ciaran’s, Palolem
A very nice place to eat. Went there for our anniversary dinner. It was a candle light.. Lovely ambience, great live music by a guy hailing from Manali. We had a sea food platter with lobster and king prawns. It was very nice. This place gave a true Goa feel.
The Cape Goa, Cabo de Rama
View from this place feels like heaven. The Cape Goa is highly rated in Instagram and other social media. We just had a quick cursory visit. They are quite miserly with quantity for the price they charge. I personally do not like these type of places to eat. Ambience is superb. I wish the food was better. There are other nice places adjacent to it. Would try them next time.
Coastal flavours, Patnem
The most humble place we visited. Its a highly rated place for food. The ambience can easily turn you off. Its difficult to reach, looks like a shady place. But, the food was amazing. We had a stuffed ‘butter nan’ as a starter and Prawn rice bowl. The taste was really good for both. It was almost closing time for them at around 11 pm. The owner cum chef came to us for feedback while we were eating. We had a good discussion over food. He was kind enough to share his goan prawn curry recipe, which I tried to recreate back home. It was really good. Everyone at home loved it. The flavour could be achieved I felt.
Other than the places listed above, there were a few more places we visited, and they were great too. A Tapas place called Jaali kitchen & boutique in Cancona area was worth mentioning here.. for their wonderful salad. Fisherman’s Wharf has multiple outlets. We went to Panaji.. It was great too. I sincerely hope this post will of some help to people who love to eat. So, next time you are in Goa, you know where to eat!!
This post is part of #BlogchatterA2Z challenge and this is the P– post
