Eating is Fun / Eating is Yuck! – A variety food column

By Tara Narayan

I HAVE more or less stopped eating out because most places are so corrupted that they offer little value for money – even if any number of people these days are doing some fancy food or another designed to kill you off as quickly as possible! I’ve virtually stopped eating out with the exception of a few tried and trusted places, but this time around I wasn’t going out to eat on my own but with some friends, who were taking me out depending on where I suggested we go — if we wanted to enjoy some reasonably desirable and edible food.

On the first occasion we went to the all-time favourite Chinese Goenchi’ where I know I will always like the steamed veggie wontons and claypot veggie rice – the place was cramped to the gills, proving that it’s still the favourite place for any Chinese food worth eating. The waiters recognize regulars and are friendly enough to advice you sensibly depending on what you feel like eating. Service is a tad too hasty though like they would like you to eat and scoot quickly because others are waiting for a table…I hate it, for I generally like to eat slow and moon moon over my food and especially if I am with a friend. This is to sayGoenchi’ is undoubtedly the number one Chinese food institution in capital city Panaji, and I would recommend you go there early enough to dine early enough peacefully to spend a peaceful night later on!
THEN more recently I discovered a new favourite place. You must know by now that the Big Daddy casino king Gopal Kanda has taken over Fidalgo Hotel and there’s a new restaurant opened out there called Southern Basil – specializing in the southern Indian cuisines of Tamil Nadu, Kerela, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka…but I think they must be having a couple of diehard Andhra chefs who will make dishes a little more spicy to burn the cockles of the heart. Andhra and Telangana food can burn the palate and never mind that there are those who like it spiced up.

We had gone out with some friends celebrating an occasion, but our generous friends asked me about where we could go and I promptly said for our kind of people the newly opened Southern Basil’ at Fidalgo is best. Seeing how all of us have southern genes including me although I’m Guju in love with all things southern. I consider the southern array of Indian breakfast fare the most health-conscious cuisine of the sub-continent and will go out of my way to look for breakfast of neer dosa, idli, medhuvada, upma, set dosa and on the odd occasion a veggie cutlet Kamat Hotel-style, but I’ve written about them here before. Kamat’s best but for idli try Siddhi’s at Dona Paula at 7.30am (they also do neer dosa but indifferently at times and serve this with kurma). BUT we are atSouthern Basil’ with its exhaustive tantalizing menu listing very many favourites from down south India – earlier here I’d been delighted to see kuzhu paniyaran listed and I’m so crazy about them, the next week I would drop by just to savor them or take them home. Then over time I noticed them becoming less perfect, in the evening they were over sizzled in the paniyaran pan (or possibly made in advance and kept in the fridge to be ghee roasted later on order). The three chutney portions too have become stingy now.
But that day we were half-a-dozen of us and alas, all vegetarian. We ordered for appam-stew, kuzhu paniyaran, paratha kuttu, my friend Lata Bhatikar ordered iddiappam served with rich sweet coconut milk and she said it was “heavenly! Even in Goa we have this dish…” I was wondering what kuttu paratha would be all about and then discovered that’s just a Malabari or Sri Lankan maida paratha cooked crisp and crunched up before being stir-fried with a bunch of veggies. Like a paratha upma maybe, I tasted and it was nice but a little over-salted. The appam-stew friend said the appam were too soft, lacked sponginess and the sweetness of toddy was absent, the stew portion too little.

Which left me to enjoy my tangy, delicious tamarind-redolent bisibele bath, steaming hot…a little hot but a bowl of the most perfect curd cut the fieriness and it then it was something memorable. While waiting with our drinks came the rice pappadums and salted peanuts and restaurant manager Karuna here, tempted me to order their house special which was Chennai pineapple rasam — a cocktail subtly flavoured but a little sweet for me, so I did what I always do, order for some fresh lemon juice to cut the sweetness. Then it became perfect. Cheers to Chennai pineapple rasam and Southern Basil!’ Southern Basil’ is worth it and they do have non-vegetarian classics too like Malabari kozhi fry, nei meen curry, mutton stew Malabari-style, kori gassi with kori roti (a Karnataka speciality), karri meen pollichathu (tilapia) that’s fish wrapped in a banana leaf and cooked on a tava…and much more. Amongst the veggie recipes I’d wanted to try out the Nilgiri veg korma and Vhendeka saagu…but that’ll have to stay for another time. Before I sign off here ah yes, they have all the southern range of rice temptations from bisibele bhath (recipe from the Mysore Palace reportedly) to thayir sadam (curd rice, great for settling uneasy tummies), pulihora (tamarind rice), takkali sadam (tomato bhath), naringa sadam (lemon rice) and of course steam rice white or red. Enjoy at Southern Basil!
Altogether it was a cordial evening out and we enjoyed ourselves, having enough space in tummy to share some pineapple kesari. What delighted me is that drinking water was served in these big balloon glasses and there was not a single plastic bottle of water to be seen anywhere. Wow. Take a bow `Southern Basil!’ This is no mean achievement. I don’t how we have come to such a sorry pass that we swig water from a zillion pet bottles like “junglees.” Really yucky thing to do if you consider yourself educated or civilized.