Two major anxieties gripped Goa this past week. First came the abrupt vanishing of the internet that sent the roof crashing over thousands of users, who learned on their tenuous 4G connections that the high-speed connection they were paying for was borderline “illegal”. The restoration of streaming—and a transfer or two—that same evening ensured the threat of civil war was credibly avoided. But this existential crisis was soon followed by another one: the unauthorised presence of idli-sambar on Goan beaches.
In this Fortnite deathmatch of who bears responsibility for the decline in Goa’s tourist influx, we discovered that the fault lies with idli-sambar. Michael Lobo, BJP MLA from Calangute, lamented at a recent press conference, “We have begun to sell idli sambar at Goan beach shacks. What are you trying to tell the tourists? This needs to stop.”
Lobo’s distress extends beyond breakfast foods to encompass vada pav purveyors as well as stray dogs and shacks being sublet to those routinely reviled “Delhi-waalas”. It’s certainly not the inadequate infrastructure, or the taxi mafia, or the unplanned development that’s causing these problems.
Goa’s culinary identity
Every few months, someone sounds the alarm on Goa’s imperiled identity—sometimes it’s idli-sambar, sometimes gobi manchurian. Sometimes, the North Indian playbook of attacking people’s food goes a little too far, like it did this past Christmas when cow vigilantes tried to come for Goa’s beef, leading to promises of prompt action from CM Pramod Sawant.
But beneath this public hand-wringing lurks a subtext about class, migration, and who gets to define a place’s culinary identity. Idli-sambar and gobi manchurian are shorthand for working-class migrants who build Goa’s infrastructure and staff its tourism industry, as well as for the budget travellers who can’t afford craft cocktails and artisanal sourdough in the state’s more celebrated establishments. Their presence sustains small, overlit businesses that line Goa’s highways, far from the cafés and restaurants that garner Insta-acclaim.
Still, Lobo’s theatrical concerns have unveiled a question that resonates with many Goans: As the state ascends to its newly anointed status as India’s culinary capital, what happens to Goan food itself? Does it risk being reduced to a few customary dishes like fish thali, xacuti, and vindaloo? And where does the search for the authentic take us?
Goa’s epicurean culture has cast a net vast and wide. On the tony Assagao strip that unites middle-class Mapusa with hip Anjuna, every other Goan bungalow is a restaurant headlined by an acclaimed chef or a specialty coffee shop. The tiny state has put a whopping 10 entries on the coveted Condé Nast Traveller list of India’s best restaurants in 2024, just behind Mumbai. You can sample everything from Burmese food to Japanese to elevated contemporary Indian. And even the most discerning metropolitan palate will surrender in appreciation.
Yet when visiting friends ask me where they can go for “authentic” Goan cuisine that isn’t vindaloo and fish thali, I find myself hesitating, scanning through a surprisingly abbreviated list of reliable options. Not that these places don’t exist; they absolutely do. But you really have to seek them out with intention.
Also read: Goa tourism needs to reimagine itself. There’s more to it than beaches and booze
A multi-pronged problem
Food and travel writer Joanna Lobo, who closely watches Goa’s dining scene, said Goan food has been reduced to a handful of recognisable signifiers, meant for the tourist’s palate. “When I go for restaurant openings and launches, I rarely find a local Goan newspaper invited,” she told me. “But what restaurants don’t realise is that Goans are going to sustain these places, when tourist traffic fades.”
The problem, according to Lobo, is multi-pronged. There is no representation of the depth and diversity of Goan cuisine, for instance, Konkani Muslim or Hindu festival food. Tourist demand, meanwhile, fuels the inclusion of paneer tikka and butter chicken on the menu. But the real tragedy isn’t the arrival of international cuisine—it’s that this supposed diversity arrives by way of deeper conformity, a consensus that replaces one kind of homogeneity with another. “My main problem,” she continued, “is that we get more of the same pan-Asian or Middle Eastern dishes. No one wants to try and be too different.”
This pattern isn’t unique to Goa. We’ve witnessed this gastronomic gentrification from Hauz Khas to Bandra. First come the adventurous chefs seeking affordable rent and receptive audiences, then the Instagram influencers seeking out the new, and finally, following the siren song of novelty, the horde. What is unique to Goa, though, is the proliferation of new restaurants during the pandemic. Lobo pointed out that several entrepreneurial ambitions were realised in Goa, thanks to manageable overheads, cheaper alcohol, and a ready audience that had traded their hectic cities for the laidback village—but couldn’t let go of their tastes.
This abundance of ambitious new establishments that hog the spotlight at the cost of local food is inevitable in any place that encounters tourism, said writer Vikram Doctor. At the recent Serendipity Arts Festival, Doctor had led a workshop titled ‘Gobi Manchurian and the City’ that explored how anxieties about class and belonging manifest in bans on working-class food.
In Goa, an example of the oversimplification of cuisine is the fish that appear on restaurant menus: boneless chonak, surmai, and pomfret, which was “never a favoured Goan fish”. “It becomes a function of what is easy to present, and what people will accept easily,” Doctor said.
“Traditional dishes that use dried fish, for instance, might not be acceptable to tourists that come here.” Even bebinca’s stranglehold over Goan desserts reflects this pattern. Doctor explained that “it is just exotic enough, and easy to package in advance.” Meanwhile, more delicate creations like bolo sans rival or toucinho do ceu remain largely confined to local homes. The economics of running a restaurant sharpen this dynamic. “In Delhi and Mumbai,” Doctor observed, “the restaurant has to be good for a local audience. But in Goa, a lot of the customers are not going to come back.” With transient patrons, atmosphere and location often trump the integrity of the food.
Still, within this landscape of necessary simplification, some chefs and entrepreneurs have embarked on journeys of rediscovery. Cavatina by Avinash Martins sits among the celebrated establishments on the Condé Nast Traveller list, distinguished by its mission to showcase how Goan cuisine can be preserved and reimagined.
Martins used the forced closure of his restaurant during the pandemic to reset. For six months, he immersed himself into different communities—farmers, basket weavers—within a 10-km radius. He worked alongside bakers, experiencing firsthand the back-breaking work involved in bringing bread to people before they even wake up. These encounters transformed his approach. “I thought that if I don’t celebrate these traditions, I won’t touch anyone’s soul,” he said.
That’s why everything on the exceptional menu seems simultaneously foreign and familiar. Martins didn’t bother with putting together a market mix. “If the patrons were Goan, I wanted them to experience nostalgia. If they were tourists, I wanted them to learn about Goan food,” he said. The chef thinks it is a very healthy sign to have such diversity in restaurants, so long as the food is made with understanding, heart, and soul. “We need chefs who can tell stories, not just investors and consultants who will cut, copy, paste a trend,” he said.
Oliver Fernandes, who runs The Goan Kitchen with chef Crescy Baptista, echoes that sentiment. “I see hospitality colleges training the next generation of chefs in French or Italian food, but there isn’t enough focus on specialising in their own cuisine,” said Fernandes. He pointed out that while it is great that tourists can come to Goa to get a taste of international cuisines in fantastic settings, it would be nice to see more representation for regional Indian food.
Also read: Goa’s tourism is changing, not dying. People don’t want ‘minibus tourists’
‘A platform’
Fernandes’ own journey with The Goan Kitchen started when he realised that Goa didn’t have a centralised repository for regional specialties. “There was no one place you could go to that had the A-Z of Goan food. There are some establishments that source products from home cooks, which could result in inconsistent quality,” he said. His research revealed cultural knowledge hanging by threads. From an initial laundry list, Fernandes and team zeroed in on 250 Goan dishes and realised they couldn’t even find photos of some of them. What began as a business evolved into stewardship, intentionally bridging community divisions that have sometimes compartmentalised Goan cuisine.
This tension between preservation and innovation reflects broader questions about what it means for a place to become a “culinary capital”. Is it measured by international recognition and Instagrammable establishments? Or by how well it maintains the continuity of its own gastronomic heritage? Rather than seeing Goa’s transformation as a zero-sum game, food enthusiast Charles Victor suggests that “the bigger thing to celebrate is that Goa has become a platform, and that’s no small feat.” His comparison to San Sebastián, a tiny city in Spain labelled the “Best Food Destination in the world”, offers a model for Goa. San Sebastián is a hotbed of experimentation. “It is an amalgamation of a lot of things: Some of it is very true and traditional, some has no connection to the original.”
Maybe that’s a path Goa can emulate as well. A truly confident culinary capital, after all, can—and should—accommodate both the traditional and irreverent reinvention of familiar flavours.
As for the crusades against alien breakfast foods? Surely, in a state where the internet can disappear without warning, we have bigger fish to fry.
This article is part of the Goa Life series, which explores the new and the old of Goan culture.
Karanjeet Kaur is a journalist, former editor of Arré, and a partner at TWO Design. She tweets @Kaju_Katri. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)