Table in the Hills by Avinash Martins

This feels at the outset like a pointless article. Like I told Avinash Martins, I simply don’t have the words or the ability to describe this meal in a way that does it justice. People will use expressions like “farm to table meal” or words like “experience”. But these words are cliche and insufficient to explain what this meal was like. The frame of reference for what Avinash is trying (successfully) to accomplish here isn’t any meal in India but something like Faviken when it existed. 

Kanji, sweet potato, pickled vegetables 

Tender coconut carpaccio with coconut leche de Tigre  

I know I am accused of hyperbole and as soon as I told my wife this is one of the five greatest dining experiences I’ve ever had in India, she instinctively said I was exaggerating. But weeks later, we still have no more than four meals that can compare and I can name them and the chefs.. Bawmra Jap cooking the food of his tribe, Gresham Fernandes and his one off Tokyo Takeover meal, Prateek Sadhu serving a full 8 course meal at the pass at Masque and Vikramjit Roy’s private kitchen in Delhi. Those were four meals that I can never forget, that went beyond any restaurant meal, food that I felt grateful to be fed, where the chefs went out of their way to share something deeply personal and meaningful to them, that had nothing to do with the menu or commerce or the restaurant “scene”. To that list of unforgettable meals, I now add a fifth. 

A celebration of fresh feni 

The meal takes place in Avinash’s family farm, not at his phenomenally successful restaurant Cavatina. He doesn’t cook there often. You need to reach out and request him for a meal there and he is careful about who he invites to the farm because it is sharing a piece of his life and his family. There is no signal and it’s far off the beaten path in a remote village in South Goa, away from all the large resorts and tourist spots. You need to find a chapel and leave your car there so someone from the farm can come and get you and you walk the last bit, down a tiny hill, across a little stream and into The Table in the Hills. 

Crab Xec Xec bisque, crab cake 

Once you’re there you drink some freshly brewed feni while Avinash and his wife Tiz welcome you and tell you a little bit about the place. By the time you have your first drink, sitting with your feet in their splash pool, surrounded by the green and the birds and the chirping of crickets and the gentle breeze you feel transported to a place that exists only in the imagination where you can’t hear a single car or loudspeaker and where time itself seems to slow down and linger. 

Chicken liver parfait tonak

The food is Goan food. But it’s Goan food like no one has ever cooked before. It is Goan food that is reimagined and reinvented. You could be eating at a Michelin starred restaurant in Paris when it comes to the refinement of thought, expression and presentation. But unlike most of the restaurants in the Michelin guide, there is no pretentiousness in the food and it retains a honesty and a soul, a sense of its roots and history. 

Chonak, recheado verde, coconut cauda

It is also food that is stunningly creative and flavourful, that threads the needle between imagination, familiarity and flavour. In the meal we ate, fresh tender coconut was presented as a carpaccio with a leche de tegre of coconut milk. A crab Xec Xec was served as a bisque with distilled, concentrated flavours and a crab cake to give you that sweet, meaty crab curry satisfaction. The Chonak wasn’t just wrapped in banana leaf but smoked using cashew wood from the farm in a self-made smoker giving it an earthiness that complemented the silkiness of the recheado verde, in some ways inverting the usual dynamic where the masala in a recheado provides the robustness and the fish the smoothness. 

Pork belly with amsol koji

The whole meal was filled with these little flourishes of genius, and part of what was amazing was that none of this was pointed out. I noticed these details because of decades spent traveling and eating means I don’t just notice what I like but try and understand why I like it.. but the point at The Table in the Hills not to sit and showcase the chef’s brilliance in a self indulgent way. The food is just served with a simple explanation of what it is and the focus is on flavour, flavour and more flavour. The technique, skill, creativity or inventiveness that led to that flavour seemed almost incidental, the process sublimated to focus on what we as guests experienced and felt.

Wild honey and coconut flan, honey comb 

This is food that needs to be celebrated and showcased across the world, the kind that needs a Chefs Table episode. It is a labour of love, it is the embodiment of a dream, it is a flight of fantasy, it is an expression of genius and it is a blessing and gift to all of us who are able to experience it. 

Petit fours 

The food: 

• Paez (kanji), ukde tandur, glazed spiced sweet potato, pickled daikon, cucumber, carrots and beetroot 
• Tender coconut carpaccio, coconut leche de tegre, Kokum shallots, sprouts
• Crab Xec Xec Bisque, crab cake, caviar. 
• Chicken liver parfait tonak, port gel, curry leaf spuma
• Banana leaf wrapped chonak, recheado verde, coconut cauda 
• Slow roast pork belly, amsol koji, apple, carrot, beetroot coulis, buckwheat crisp

Dessert:

• Wild honey and coconut flan, honey comb 
• Petit fours