To cater to the wide range of tourists it gets—charters from England, spenders from Russia, revellers from other parts of India—almost every corner of Goa offers easy dining options. Fish curry-rice finds a place on the same menu as beef lasagna as restaurants mirror one another, even down to the Kingfisher tablecloths and paper napkins. But food remains an intrinsic part of what attracts tourists to Goa, besides the beach, shacks, parties and cheaper booze.

Over the years, new restaurants have come and gone in a season (roughly November-April), unable to find a place for themselves in an intensely competitive market. Few have survived. There have also been places that are the product of passion, a love for food and a desire to live Goa. These places are run by and belong to people from all over the world, who have a story to tell and sometimes, a secret for their success.

Here we have seven restaurateurs—individuals or couples, foreigners, an overseas citizen of India, an Indian raised abroad, people from other parts of the country settled in Goa, and a Goan. They offer different cuisines, cater to all kinds of clientele, always mingle with guests and know what it takes to make it work. They are the small restaurateurs of Goa who mix good food with warm hospitality.

A view to kill for

Sunset point: Thalassa at Vagator

Mariketty Grana feels a spiritual connection to India, which she illustrates with two stories. She was eight years old, visiting her sister in England, when she bumped into this “stunning, green-eyed Sikh man” on the street. She had had no “Indian experience” till then but the man left such an impression that she ran home to announce she would one day go to India.

Several years later, she was once again in a hurry, this time to avoid getting wet in rainy Corfu, the Greek island she grew up in. Her eight-year-old son Spiro suddenly pulled away and picked up a small stone idol of the Hindu god Ganesha, an unexpected discovery in a purely Christian village. Mariketty, as she likes to be referred to, was at that time in the midst of a critical decision, on whether she should move to India or not. Her answer, it would seem, came from the gods. That was roughly a decade ago.

“It was like some sort of power. When I came here first, I could not leave, the love and passion I found here was amazing,” says Mariketty who spends about six months every year in Goa.

Mariketty runs one of Goa’s most picturesque restaurants, Thalassa, an open-air eatery on a hill that overlooks the ocean at Vagator. The tables at the edge are booked way in advance, a vantage point for those swayed by the beauty of the setting sun. The cuisine, Greek, offers a rare change from touristy fish-and-chips. The place swarms with predominantly Indian tourists, many of them repeat visitors, as Mariketty flits from one table to the other to ensure her clients are served well. Her staff is possibly among the best in Goa, young, enthusiastic men and women, wearing stylish glares and bustling with charm.

The restaurant’s Greek salad

“I remember on our first visit to India some 20 years ago, we met someone on the plane to Mumbai carrying a Lonely Planet and today, I am in the Lonely Planet, credited with ‘ridiculously good food’. Everything is so strange. Sometimes I pinch myself to make sure if it’s really happening,” she says, resting her ankle, swollen from hours of standing and walking.

Having visited India, particularly Goa, many times, Mariketty chose to spend a longer time here after her son started going to school and she could not continue the nomadic visits. She started by selling kebabs, wraps and grills at the weekly markets of north Goa, a skill she learnt from her family, almost all of whom are in the restaurant business in Greece. The popularity of her weekly fare led to the idea of a restaurant and to a rocky plot of land, which she and partner Ivan Pinto converted into Thalassa three seasons ago.

Mariketty Grana

“It’s not easy to run a restaurant,” she says. “People can put furniture worth crores and they won’t know how to heat a pan. If someone can’t cook here, I can take over. I can do everything and I have no fear because I love my place. I am serving you food from my home,” she says, and rushes off to politely remind a visitor from Delhi, incessantly asking for saunf (fennel seeds), that the restaurant is Greek.

Escape from the city

Aakritee and Virendra Sinh.

The impression A Reverie makes is instant—in its scale, size, location and ambience. A tall bar supported by huge pillars sets up the scene as soon as one enters, overlooking a sea of tables or fancy sofas. There is an unusual sense of space in the restaurant that can seat a hundred people. It’s not the place to trundle into with sandy feet and wet shorts.

It was set up by Virendra and Aakritee Sinh, who gave up jobs with the Taj group (he was in Mumbai, she was in Delhi and then Goa) in 1997 to “live the beach life”. They met here, got married here before Aakritee became the “rasoia (chef)”. She loved to cook; Virendra was trying to get away from the city rat race.

Virendra started A Reverie in 2001 at another location. It ran for five years before an “unscrupulous landlord did not like someone profiting from his property”, so the couple decided to get their own place to escape the rent trap. They have been operating from their current location near Calangute beach since 2006.

Gourmet fare: A Reverie is described by its owners as ‘going to a Zen retreat in a space colony’.

The food is international —home-made chicken liver pâté coexisting with a vegetarian Thai thali and a slow-roasted cured duck leg confit among others. It’s also one of Goa’s most expensive stand-alone restaurants.

“Today, where gastronomy is gone, it does not mean you forget your culinary heritage,” says Aakritee, as they wind down after business late on a Friday night. “The basic technique remains the same but food has to evolve. It is a part of my endless pursuit of learning. I do hope to be a gleaming apex of the culinary world one day. ”

“We are here because of her passion for food and my love for Goa,” adds Virendra.

Vaishaali Sood.

Across the state, about an hour’s drive away, Vaishaali and Lokesh Sood form a perfect team to run a restaurant in Goa—she is a Le Cordon Bleu trained chef and he has a real estate business.

On the road to Majorda beach in south Goa, Fusion does not get the passing tourist traffic because this is not the haunt of the backpacker. It’s both Fusion’s advantage and its biggest challenge.

Vaishaali keeps alive—and adds her touch—to a concept started by Brazilian chef Jose Augusto Souza, who opened Fusion seven years ago and sold to the Soods two years ago. Their Continental food includes Beef na Pedra, slices of beef that come on a hot plate for the customer to barbecue on the table as they want to, besides pastas and grills.

A private party at Fusion, Majorda.

Vaishaali already had a catering business in Delhi before the couple decided to move lock, stock and cutlery to Goa. Opening a restaurant there seemed more feasible.

The clientele is mostly foreign, as few Indian tourists come to these parts and the locals are not easily converted. “They see us and say she is a Dilliwali, they have a mindset against people from Delhi,” says Lokesh.

Yet, Vaishaali adds: “We have run away from the city, I can’t see myself going back. We have a nice life, our daughter goes to a good college. We work six months, six months we don’t.”

French connection

Bon appétit: Dayini Feraud runs Baba Au Rhum with husband Leo Michaud

Dayini Feraud speaks easily of detachment, calls herself an “Aurovillian” because she does not feel French despite her parentage and yet is “too white” to be considered an Indian. “I never lived in France and my education was in English. I am a bit Indian in my way of thinking, but I have foreign parents,” says Feraud, who has overseas citizenship of India (OCI).

Feraud runs a café with husband Leo Michaud in Arpora, identified by one small sign on a main road. The tiny path that leads to a residential settlement is easy to miss but once identified, Baba Au Rhum demands a revisit. It has informal blue walls, potted plants, orange-coloured ceiling fans, a thatched roof, wooden tables and backless benches, a sign that reads “Terrasse” and a soft board with flyers of the latest yoga group.

The café sells salads, sandwiches, baguettes, croissants and everything that’s French. It came about when the couple, with their then newborn daughter, decided to settle in Goa as a compromise between Europe and Auroville. French-German Michaud’s family in Europe was involved in baking, so that seemed to be a natural choice.

Six years later, the couple says, every day is still a challenge. On the day she spoke to Lounge, Feraud was having trouble with her Mumbai supplier, on other days it’s the power or the oven that’s not working, or “some material that’s fallen apart”.

The cafe

They say their first mistake was to apply for a licence as a bakery, instead of a restaurant, because the former comes under the category of an industry. “So they ask me how many tonnes I make every day,” remembers Michaud, sitting cross-legged in shorts and a T-shirt, his hair a tangled mess from too many bike rides. “I say look at me, man, do I look like someone who deals in tonnes? So he asks again and I say I make 30kg. So it’s not a bakery in that sense but by then it was too late.”

“People only know of this place through word-of-mouth,” says Feraud. “We are not good business people. The beginning was hard because we are off the beaten track. Some people sometimes looked for a year before they found us and those who did, always came back.”

“It’s a family enterprise. I am the boss but they run the show,” she says of her long-term loyal local staff.

The survivor

Christopher Saleem Agha Bee

Christopher Saleem Agha Bee’s stint in Goa has been as busy as his name is. He has seen it all—success, fear, jealousy and violence—as an “outsider” trying to get a bite of the inclusive share of the tourist pie.

In its ninth season, his restaurant Sublime in Saligao is considered one of Goa’s best, a reputation it has carried with it since the beginning despite having had to change many venues. Its latest avatar is in the front garden of a bungalow in a residential stretch away from the humming beach belt. A beautifully designed bar faces the set of a dozen dining tables strewn with rose petals, some tables under a thatched central enclosure, and the rest shadowed by coconut trees. His famous mustard fillet of fish, which now appears occasionally on the menu as a special, is one of several attractions that brings regulars to Sublime, irrespective of where it may be located.

Bee came to Goa a decade ago as a 24-year-old to work as head chef in a hotel belonging to a former girlfriend’s parents. Having worked in a restaurant in Santa Barbara, California, US, he knew food, but not what it entails to be a head chef. There was little scope for experimentation and Bee left to start his own restaurant in Calangute, with savings of Rs35,000 and five tables. In 2003, its second year, Sublime ran into landlord issues, but Bee had also been swept off his feet by an English couple “who tempted me with a stage to perform on and I went like a fool into this partnership at Baga river for a year”.

Back on track: Christopher Saleem Agha Bee says Sublime is meant for people with all kinds of budgets.

A year later, unpaid and feeling exploited, he got a lucky break at Anjuna, where he first tasted big success. He had three years of “absolute fantasy” before running into problems in the third year—he was attacked and assaulted by neighbouring restaurateurs unable to handle his success. “I didn’t want to do my business anywhere if I am not welcome. It’s hard enough as it is, if you (are) not getting support from people around,” he says.

“I didn’t want to open anything, to be honest, because this is such a ridiculous story here; every time you want to do something, you get shot down.” But he stayed on as the Saligao deal worked out. He decided to take another shot at Sublime, away from confrontational tourist hubs.

Bee’s parents separated when he was 6; he moved to the US with his mother, and later to Germany when she remarried. But his connections to India remained, through his father, the late actor Jalal Agha, with whom he discovered the country on every visit. Even when he moved back to the US, studying catering after accidentally discovering that he was pretty good in the kitchen, Bee knew he had to give India, and Goa, a shot.

“You can really be who you are here,” he says. “I don’t think I can come to work any other place like I am—with make-up, cut-off shirt and army shorts. I can be who I want to be and people don’t judge me for that.”

The hole-in-the-wall

Lloyd Braganza.

It’s located on one of north Goa’s busiest streets in Calangute and yet, if you’re a first-timer, it can take a few trips up and down the road to spot it. Lloyd’s is a garage, converted with four tables into a restaurant that’s equally popular with locals and tourists lucky enough to find it.

Lloyd Braganza, its owner, also makes the best steaks and grills, pure meat with little of the decorative sauce and assortments, in a casual, informal set-up that allows for conversation with the chef while he is barbecuing.

Braganza, 36, says he never trained to be a chef; he just followed his hobby and made it a career. His mother makes the Goan food at his new restaurant, called the House of Lloyd’s, in Candolim. The House of Lloyd’s, Braganza’s home doubling up as a restaurant at night, opened this season. It’s as big as Lloyd’s is small; indeed, just the bar in the house is larger than the garage.

Grills and more: The House of Lloyd’s, which is many times larger than his first place, Lloyd’s.

Braganza, who started 16 years ago, worked at a restaurant, Chopsticks, for eight years before “too much partying” did him in. When it shut down in 2001, he worked as a waiter for a year before a friend offered him his garage. The garage’s success led to the House of Lloyd’s, which can accommodate up to 250 people.

“I don’t cater only to foreigners; most of my clients are local people because also I am open all year,” says Braganza. He has strong opinions about “outsiders” doing business in Goa, saying they should just “chill on the beach” instead.

He visits Lloyd’s, the hole-in-the-wall that made him famous, after he is done with work at the House, for Lloyd’s is an after-hours place that entices late-night party hoppers with a roadside grill. “I cannot rely on anyone else,” he insists. “Another person may not take as much interest in your restaurant. I always have to be there, by the barbecue.”

Burmese brand

Luck matters: Bawmra Jap

Bawmra Jap is an accidental chef. He moved from Myanmar to England to study computing or “something glamorous”, but realized he was not good at it. Egged on by friends who believed he should get into catering, he responded to an advertisement for a South-East Asian chef, impressed his employer by cooking for him at home and got the job.

A month later, he was sacked. Unable to cope with the demand for quick turnover in a professional kitchen, he could not keep down a job till his wife Maryam Shahmanesh moved to Goa on an HIV-related project in 2003. Faced with the prospect of living here for four years, unable to find employment in any of the restaurants, Jap got a lucky break in his landlord, who wanted to discontinue his Chinese restaurant in Candolim. Jap took over seven seasons ago and named the South Asian restaurant after himself, Bomra’s.

Though referred to as a Burmese restaurant because of his origins, Bomra’s has South Asian cuisine with some Burmese dishes thrown in. It won the NDTV Good Times award last year for the best Asian restaurant in India and the Time Out food award for the best restaurant in Goa. Jap says: “I am not interested in all of that. All the publicity is good but I don’t want to annoy the big boys. I want to be modest, low-key and cook good food.”

An early evening at Bomra’s.

He says the secret of running a successful restaurant is luck. “There is no secret recipe. For people like us, small business chefs, a lot of the time it is hard work. Good food is always an asset, but a lot of time, it’s luck. This is a tough business. People go down despite good food and good experience because you are at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

He has also been lucky with his landlord, who takes care of most of the administrative issues that trouble foreigners most. Open only during season for dinner, Bomra’s serves the khao suey only on Wednesdays.

“I don’t like khao suey,” says Jap, laughing. “I keep it for my regulars because the only connection in India with Burma is khao suey. It’s messy, it takes space in the kitchen and shop floor, it becomes more work and we don’t make as much money as we would with a la carte.”

Photographs by Rakesh Mundye/Mint

arun.j@livemint.com