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C103
Article; from Feature 'Life is what you make of it'
THE HOTEL
MANGALORE
Choudi
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De-lux
Fish-curry-rice, Prawn Chilli
Fry (background) / Hotel Mangalore
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Canacona
is at one extreme end of Goa and is where everyone headed
to after Anjuna got too noisy and Baga, Calangute and
Candolim got overcrowded. The Hotel Mangalore is on the
National Highway 17 about 1km away from Canacona's main
tiny town, Chaudi. It's close to Char Rasta (literally,
Four Roads) but should not to be confused with anotherrestaurant
of the same name, that lies closer to the petrol pump.
Don't get
taken in by the 'hotel' tag. In Indian-English you don't
need to
have rooms
on let to qualify you for this term. Even a tiny 'chai
shop'
(roadside
tea stall) can, and often does, grandiloquently, call
itself a
'hotel'.
It simply means a restaurant. And don't be confused by
the 'Mangalore' tag either; Mangalore is a coastal city
400 kms further south in the neighbouring state of Karnataka.
And like Goa, it shares a love for sea-food and fish curries
- though with a rather distinct flavour which would be
certainly obvious to the local tongue.
The Hotel
Mangalore is a modest place, with a long menu, and worth-recommending
dishes. It's hastily scrawled board announces a 'deluxe
fish c. rice' (the 'c' is for curry) at
Rs 80,
a semi-deluxe version for half that price, and a 'local'
equivalent for one-fourth. Obviously fish is its specialty.
Canacona has the seashore and also rivers like the Galgibag
and Talpona. Fish preparations are the pivot that hold
the rice-curry staple, and fish can often be a conversation
point here as elsewhere in Goa.
The Hotel
Mangalore is the kind of place that locals eat at; a hole-in-the-wall
offering good value-for-money. But it probably has aspirations
to attract the tourists that throng to nearby Palolem
beach, some 3kms away. The make-believe shack before the
'hotel' - thatched coconut shacks are more a beachside
reality -perhaps reflects this dream. Liquor is served
only outside, in the 'shack'.
The menu
has nearly a dozen-and-half chicken dishes. Fish (the
prices fluctuate like on the stock-market... depending
on the weather and tourist-fuelled demand) and prawn are
over two dozen in number. Then there are veg dishes and
rice items too, besides fruit juices.
The food
here is local with acoastal Manglorean slant - no watered
down, bland recipes that are aimedprimarily at the foreign
tourists in more 'happening' places. "80-85 percent visitors
are locals", says owner Valerian Viegas. He comes from
a village near Mangalore, worked as a waiter in nearby
Margao, and then launched this small place with "zero
capital". "I didn't know to cook, but just saw others
and learned," he explains in the local lingo, Konkani.
He can afford to spill out the beans; the food tastes
good.
My lunchtime
companion and I opted for the delux fish curry-rice which
consisted of three types of fish fried in 'rava' and curries
garnished with what seemed to be fresh herbs. There were
chapaties and parathas to dip into too. Viegas recommended
a prawn dish with green masala. He offered to show us
howMangaloreans fry their fish, but as we animatedly exchanged
views, the dish had been already served. It ended with
a spoonful of 'baddixep' (aniseed and fennel) roasted
warm and fresh.
As a working
lunch it could have been more elaborate elsewhere, but
this itself was filling... cost for two:
Rs 156
(£2.10p).
Incidentally,
Mangalorean packet-curries (in powder form) for fish or
meat are often so tasty to the Goan tongue. One cookbook,
written by a
Mangalorean
Christian called Isidore Coelho, taught the first steps
of
cooking
to many Goan just-married women across generations....
Valerian
spoke about
the Bapat masala ("best for the Mangalorean style of pork").
This is
a Goa which is suddenly seeing many more influences on
it's already quaint East-West mix of food. Globalisation
might not be such a bad word in this a context!
Article reproduced from CIRCA
103, Spring 2003, pp.60-61.
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