Venite, Panjim

Our friends Griselda and Fernando from Our White Door must have warned us a dozen times that Venite was not about the food. They needn’t have worried because I trust them completely when it comes to discovering Goa and it’s secrets. Griselda is a fabulous chef who is cooking incredible meals at their old family mansion in Goa (Our White Door, which I wrote about recently). And Fernando knows more about Goa than anyone I’ve ever met, the man who opened the door and led me to the salted tongue with undo at Club Nacional, probably my dish of the year. 

Venite is probably the oldest restaurant in Goa, started before independence at a time when most people still ate at home. The food is classic, the kind of food that has been providing comfort and happiness to visitors and locals for decades now… spaghetti and steak and stuffed crab and xacuti. 

But the food is besides the point. You climb up the steps and walk into this wonderful light filled room and you’re walking into a repository of collective memories. The walls and even the roof are filled with scribbles and notes and sketches and graffiti from guests over the years, capturing a specific moment, a meal with friends, a drunken evening, a broken heart, a moment to hold on to (Fernando had 3 scribbles we found dating back to his teenage years). 

The balconies have little tables where young couples and old lovers can sit and see the world drift by below, while a light breeze blows across the Mandovi into the narrow lane, and inside the regulars smile benevolently at them between beers or a catch up with friends from the old neighbourhood. 

Like Koshys in Bangalore or India Coffee House in Kolkata, Venite isn’t really about what you eat. It’s about how you feel and it is a place where memories are created and held, a museum of the mind, a heritage that embodies a way of life. Places like this are precious and timeless and I wish and hope that they are cherished and preserved for generations to come.