#blahvsfood: Palacio Do Deao in Quepem and what Goa means to me.

The Goa I love has nothing to do with shacks and beaches.

The Goa I love also has nothing to do with the many buzzing restaurants and bars in north Goa, largely in the Siolim to Assgao belt. 

I think there are some outstanding F and B outlets in that belt, but at many of these places, I don’t feel like I’m in Goa. I could be sitting in Mumbai or Delhi or Bangalore or any big city. Yes there are Goan elements, but on the whole, it often feels to me like some sort of settler colonialism, the modern consumerist version of the member’s clubs the British created in the outposts of Empire. 

Whether it’s food or drink, whether it’s the kind of people around me, or the chef or the service staff, everything feels transplanted and inorganic. You’ll occasionally find a Bawmra Jap who is more Goan than most Goans, but more often than not, I find a sense of transience and transaction when I go out to the famous restaurants in North Goa. 

When I was young man living in Sweden I never saw the point in going to another country and hanging with Indians rather than embracing the culture of the place I had gone to. Similarly, I don’t understand the point of going to Goa and spending time at places and with people that I could meet in any large city. 

So what is the Goa I love?

It is a land and culture that is completely unique, not just in India but in the world. A syncretic blend of religions and languages and traditions that go back centuries. A place where the state’s Portugese roots are expressed through food, names, community, architecture and festivals while still having an Indian identity. 

A place where the pace and rhythm of life feels gentler and more natural, almost island like. 

You’ll also find lot more of my Goa in the south than in the north. My goa is a place where the conflict between Goa’s green bounty and real estate land sharks continues, but where nature hasn’t been completely overrun by the armies of construction (yet).

Sometimes the Goa I love feels like a living breathing thing, Macondo come to life. I keep wondering if there isn’t someway to petition Goa to be some kind of world heritage site. From the old bungalows with their windows made of shells and sloping roofs of baked clay tiles, to the village churches made with laterite stones and basalt, gleaming as the sun reflects on white lime plaster walls under a cobalt sky, there is no place like the Goa I know and love. 

It is the Goa of little tavernas where we drink feni and feast on Assado and feijoada, where we end a meal with the intense jaggery richness of a dodol or a cloud of serradura. It is the Goa where Maria Pita Che gives way to the soulful, delicate notes of Fado. 

It is village feasts and nativity rituals. It is roadside stalls selling prawn rissois or the bread vendors outside churches selling undo, crusty on the outside, soft and fluffy inside, putting every baguette in the world to shame. It is grandmothers chatting in community centres while the children run around and eat salted tongue when they catch a breath from their fun and games. 

This is a Goa of beauty and wonder, and sadly it is a Goa that is disappearing, not so much undiscovered as unseen. 

And yet, there are a few places where this Goa I know and love lives on, raging against the dying of the light. One such place lies in the village of Quepem, in the southern hinterland miles from the nearest beach. 

At the turn of the century, Reuben Da Gama started thinking about the abandoned home next to the church in his village. Built in 1787 by José Costa Paulo de Almeida, the priest who had set up the church, the home had fallen into disrepair. But everytime Ruben looked at it, he didn’t see decay, he saw potential. He went to Portugal, and studied archives. In his mind and through ancient maps, he created an imagine of how the house looked, the materials, the gardens, the artefacts and furniture. Over three years, he gradually restored the home and brought it back to life. And for the last twenty years, he has nurtured and looked after this labour of love, this shrine to Goan history and tradition. 

You can visit Palacio do Deao and do a traditional Goan meal and see the home by booking in advance. The food is cooked by Reuben’s wife Celia and while she insists she isn’t a chef but a home cook, the food is better than most Goan restaurants you can find. Everything is locally sourced and produced, even the feni, which is distilled in the family farm. And if you’re lucky, you’ll get Luso Portuguese dishes like pumpkin pie and pork empada that I’ve never found in any restaurant in Goa. 

All the money from the meals goes back to support the property, to pay back the loan for its restoration and to continue preserving this jewel of Goan heritage. 

Palacio do Deao takes everything I love about Goa and compresses it into one magical afternoon. The warmth, the history, the religious and cultural diversity, the food and drink, the sense of living heritage. You go there in a Proustian search of lost time, but you actually find it and are transported, and in the process you are transformed. Because once experience this, once you see and live the Goa I love, you’ll never be able to go back to the consumerist Goa of the settlers and tourists ever again. 

The menu on the day I visited: 

*Prawn rissois 

*Toast with drumstick pâté

*Mutton croquette

*Stuffed crab

*Drumstick soup 

*Lettuce, pomegranate and avocado salad 

*Pumpkin pie 

*Grilled fish in garlic dressing 

*Masala prawns 

*Flatbean fugath 

*Pork empada

*Roasted chicken in a cashew nut marinade 

*Goan red rice 

*Cauliflower caldine

*Ambade uddamethi