Bhatti Village… and some hard questions for India’s food “experts”

Merciana, Patrick and Royston D’Souza of  Bhatti Village 

The single best meal I had over my Goan summer this year was at Bhatti village, a Goan Catholic tapestry of fried suckling and roast tongue, fish roe and mussels. And the best serradura I’ve ever had. Not too creamy, not too crumbly, light and familiar and comforting, like a childhood memory that you’ve absorbed through osmosis. 

Fried suckling pig 

I have said for many years that Bhatti Village is one of India’s greatest restaurants. So when I came back to Bangalore, I wanted to read a nice piece about the restaurant, one that allowed me to relive the meal in some way, as well as contextualise it. It has become such a cult phenomenon in the last decade, long after I was first sent there by my friend Bawmra Jap that I assumed it’s story was well chronicled. Imagine my surprise when I couldn’t find a single piece that told the story of Bhatti Village or explored what makes it special.

Fish roe 

Patrick comes from a family that is deeply rooted in the food business in Goa. His brother Napoleon runs the restaurant at the famous Club Nacional in Panjim where he grew up. After he married Merciana who was from Calangute, they found a midway point like all good couples do, and settled down in Nerul right between their hometowns. Patrick’s first entrepreneurial venture was a small taverna he opened in Nerul in 1996 before the constraints of a young family led to a search for steadier income. But the food bug didn’t leave him. Years of eating extraordinary food at home, better than any restaurant, slowly gave birth to a dream, a place that served traditional Goan Catholic food together with his wife, and finally around 2006, Bhatti Village came into being. 

Tender coconut 

Bhatti Village doesn’t just serve the famous fish curry rice or choris with chilli that most Goan restaurants do. The focus is firmly on dishes that are cooked and eaten in Goan Catholic homes, and all the ingredients are made with local produce sourced from the local markets. They use no commercial sauces and gravies in their food, and even the coconut vinegar which is at the heart of Goan cuisine is fermented in house. Contrary to popular belief the kitchen at Bhatti isn’t a one woman show. While Merciana is clearly the person in charge, Patrick is very involved in the kitchen and their young son Royston who recently joined the business also shares the kitchen work along with handling front of house. 

Clams in coconut 

Most people think of Goan food as fish/prawn curry rice or the famous vindaloos, cafreals and sorpatels. Dig deeper though that you’ll realise that Goa’s different communities have different culinary histories and traditions. Bhatti Village serves home style Goan Catholic food supervised by Merciana D’Souza and is managed by her husband Patrick. Unlike most restaurants that claim to do homestyle food, Bhatti actually operates from Patrick and Merciana’s home kitchen and not a commercial kitchen. 

Crispy fried whitebait 

While Bhatti immediately became a cult phenomenon, it was only after five or six years that the family realised that had something special on its hands. It kept winning awards for best traditional Goan restaurants and has established itself as a place that is successful enough for Royston to quit his job as a commi chef at The Oberoi and come home to help the restaurant flourish and grow.

Roast tongue 

But all the success of the restaurant, all the awards, still fail to recognise both the uniqueness and importance of Bhatti Village. For whatever reason, it has become a cultural curiosity, Goa’s equivalent of the Masai warriors employed at the camps at Serengeti so that tourists feel that they have got an authentic taste of local culture. But in reality, this kind of pigeonholing Bhatti Village into a “great Goan food” box undermines its importance. When we talk about great Indian restaurants, we talk about Bukhara and Dum Pukht. We talk about Indian Accent and Avartana. We talk about the amazing work done at Bengalooru Oota Company and Kappa Chakka Kandhari. These are all Indian restaurants, and unquestionably great ones at that. 

But Bhatti Village is seen as a provincial restaurant. It wins awards but critics and writers don’t write about it in depth. No one writes or talks about its cultural importance, it’s fidelity to community and a way of life, the authenticity of its ingredients and recipes. No one even knows Merciana’s name, leave alone speaks about her as one of India’s great chefs. Despite the fact that Bhatti Village stands among these restaurants as an equal. When you eat Merciana’s tender coconut chilli fry, it doesn’t just change the way you look at Goan food, it forces you to reimagine the potential of a coconut and it’s place in Indian cuisine and to me, that is just one example of this restaurant’s greatness.

Serradura 

The inability of India’s food community to recognise and celebrate Bhatti Village more than it does forces me to ask some difficult questions. Is it that a restaurant cannot achieve national recognition without some expensive PR person? Is it because they don’t dole out free meals to critics and influencers? Is it because Patrick and Merciana are simple people, without the erudite, polished mediocrity that mirrors that of the wealthy cultural tastemakers in Delhi and Mumbai? Or is it that the food writing community itself lacks the vision and ability to perceive food in a way that isn’t blinkered, that doesn’t ghettoise and box places into categories, that breaks down the little narrow fiefdoms of expertise everyone basks in? 

Chonak curry 

I honestly don’t know what the answers to these questions are. 
People laugh when I claim that I’m not a food writer/critic/blogger/influencer, considering I write or post about food at least two hundred times a year. But I’m really not. I am a retired entrepreneur. I am an investor and business consultant. I am a mentor to startups. I am a stay at home father. 

Food and sharing my food journey isn’t my profession. It is my obsessive passion, my means of sharing something that has enriched my life with others, of helping those who I truly believe bring joy to my life and that of many others. 
That is why I needed to write this piece. Because sometimes an outsider can see what people in an industry don’t. Because Bhatti Village is one of India’s great restaurants. Because Bhatti Village brings me joy.