What to eat in Goa, from fish curry rice to bebinca

The first thing to eat in Goa is fish curry rice, the everyday lunch: fish in a coconut curry soured with kokum, over plain rice. It's the simplest way into a kitchen built on rice, fish and coconut. The famous names follow from there: vindaloo, xacuti, cafreal and prawn balchão, with bebinca to finish.

It's what I tell every guest in the guide I wrote for them: start with a fish curry rice at lunch and go from there. Below are the twelve dishes I point them to, grouped the way you'll meet them, and then the places I'd send you to eat them, from Siolim to the south.

What Goan food tastes like, and why

Rice is the constant, and fish matters so much that a Goan meal is thought incomplete without it. Most Goan cooking balances three things: the richness of coconut, a sour note and the heat of chillies, red or green.

Two kitchens shaped it. Goan Hindu cooking is mostly fish and vegetables, soured with kokum and tamarind, sweetened with jaggery and cooked in coconut oil. Goan Catholic cooking joined that base to Portuguese ways: vinegar, bread and pork, in dishes such as sorpotel and vindaloo.

Portugal ruled Goa for 451 years, and it shows on the plate. The Portuguese brought bread, vinegar and chillies, along with cashew, pineapple, guava, potato and tomato from Latin America, and Goan cooks made them their own. The older thread is Konkani, Goa's own language, and its kitchen of rice, fish, coconut and kokum.

Read a menu with both in mind and the names make sense. Vindaloo began as carne de vinha d'alhos, meat in wine and garlic, until Goan cooks swapped the wine for palm vinegar and added spice. Balchão came with the Portuguese, most likely from Malacca, and cafreal is traced to Portugal's African colonies, possibly Mozambique, and to the African soldiers who served under the Portuguese. Xacuti, chacuti in Portuguese, takes its name from the Konkani shagoti and is said to come from Harmal, the village now called Arambol.

The curries, and the famous names

These six are the heart of the list: one everyday plate and five famous names, most eaten with rice at lunch or dinner. If you only have room for one, make it the first.

Lunch

Fish curry rice

A staple of Goan Hindu cooking: fish in a coconut curry soured with kokum, over plain rice.

For the full plate, order a fish thali. Ritz Classic's, in Panjim, is famous.

Photo: Sujel Patil, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

With rice

Prawn balchão

Fresh prawns fried, then cooked down in a fiery, tangy masala of dried red chillies, spices and vinegar. Closer to a pickle than a curry, it's made days ahead, keeps well and is served without reheating.

Eat it with plenty of plain hot rice.

Lunch or dinner

Recheado

Portuguese for 'stuffed': mackerel, pomfret or kingfish packed with a red masala of dried chillies, garlic, ginger, spices, tamarind and vinegar, then pan-fried.

Souza Lobo lists a recheado pomfret.

Lunch or dinner

Xacuti

A rich curry of toasted coconut, white poppy seeds and large dried red chillies, warmed with pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves, usually with chicken, crab, lamb or beef.

Souza Lobo serves a crab xacuti.

With a drink

Chicken cafreal

Whole chicken legs in a green masala of chillies, fresh coriander, garlic, ginger and spice, sharpened with lime or vinegar and pan-fried until charred. A favourite in Goa's bars and taverns, served with potato wedges and lime.

Cafreal is green and piri-piri is red: don't confuse the two.

Lunch or dinner

Vindaloo

Pork in garlic, palm vinegar and spice. British curry houses made the name mean simply a very hot curry; the traditional Goan recipe is sour and garlicky, with no potatoes.

Order the pork: it's the traditional meat.

Goan breakfast, and bread at every hour

Bread came to Goa with the Portuguese in the early 17th century, and it never left. Pão is the everyday loaf. Poi is round and soft, with a pocket, made half with whole wheat and traditionally leavened with toddy, the fermented sap of the coconut palm, then baked for under a minute on the floor of a wood-fired oven.

In the villages the poder, the baker, still cycles round each morning with a horn; in Siolim you hear him before you see him. His bread is the base of the Goan breakfast, and of the snacks that keep going late into the night.

Breakfast

Bhaji pão

The Goan breakfast, and a vegetarian one: spiced vegetable bhaji with fresh pão to tear and dip.

Eat it early, where you see people stopping on the way to work.

Breakfast or a snack

Sausage pão

Spicy Goan chouriço, the local sausage, cooked and stuffed into fresh poi.

Mapusa market sells the sausages, with spices, cashews, fruit and sweets. It's open daily and liveliest on Fridays.

Photo: Aaron C, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Evenings and late

Ros omelette

An omelette with green chillies, onion and coriander in ros, Konkani for gravy: a spicy chicken or chickpea one, often close to a xacuti, eaten with pão. Food carts sell it in Goa's towns, and it's a late-night classic.

Ask which gravy it is if you don't eat meat.

Something sweet, something cool, something strong

Finish with three that belong to Goa as much as any curry: a layered pudding made above all for Christmas, a pink drink that cools the heat and a spirit distilled from the cashew fruit. Treat the last with respect. Feni takes its name from the Sanskrit phena, froth, for the foam that rises as it distils; cashew feni has held a geographical indication since 2009, and Goa named feni a heritage spirit in 2016.

Christmas, and all year

Bebinca

Flour, sugar, ghee, egg yolk and coconut milk, built one thin layer at a time, traditionally 7 to 16 of them. It's called the queen of Goan desserts and is the centrepiece of kuswar, the Christmas sweets.

Goan bakeries sell it all year, so take a slice home.

Photo: Susomoinhos, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

With or after a meal

Sol kadhi

Coconut milk and dried kokum skins, with a little garlic, chilli and salt, turned a deep purple-pink by the kokum. Served chilled, it's a digestive after spicy meals, especially fish.

Order it with a fish thali, or on its own on a hot afternoon.

Evenings

Feni

Goa's own spirit, distilled from fermented cashew apple juice or from coconut toddy, and bottled at about 43%.

Try a kokum feni at Joseph Bar in Panjim. Sip it, and never drive after.

Photo: Dr. Raju Kasambe, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Where to eat Goan food, from Siolim to the south

For Goan food itself, I'd go to five places. Souza Lobo has served Goan seafood on Calangute beach since 1932. In Panjim, Viva Panjim cooks Goan food in Fontainhas, Ritz Classic has the famous fish thali and Mum's Kitchen is known for Goan home recipes. Make one of them lunch before a walk through Fontainhas. In the south, The Fisherman's Wharf serves Goan seafood on the Sal river at Cavelossim.

The rest of my list is for a very good meal of another kind, and Siolim, home to Rivara, has three in the village itself. Fireback serves Thai cooking by chef David Thompson on the river, Thalassa pairs Greek food with river sunsets and Vera's Patisserie is a Russian-style bakery café.

Assagao has Gunpowder for South Indian and coastal cooking, The ASSA House for a French bistro and Jugnu for Indian dishes with a global twist. Around Anjuna and Vagator, Artjuna is a garden café for slow breakfasts, Slow Tide does coastal cooking on the beach and Antares offers clifftop dining over the sea. On the Calangute to Candolim stretch, Britto's is a Baga beach classic and Bomra's cooks Burmese flavours. Martin's Corner is a Betalbatim institution in the south.

Eat like a local: markets, seasons and a cooking class

Goan food follows the calendar. March brings urrak, April is cashew season and May is for mangoes, and the markets show it all at once. If you'd rather learn than order, there are kitchens that will teach you.

Leave room for lunch. Order the fish curry rice and a sol kadhi to cool it, and take a slice of bebinca home for later.