Goa’s Undiscovered Secret that Everyone’s Talking About

Bhatti Village is that ‘undiscovered secret’ that everyone will tell you about when you head to Goa but then are there any secrets left in this age of social media?

I couldn’t make it there when I went to Goa a couple of years back but did so in my recent visit.

Bhatti Village is a four year old restaurant that is located in a place called Bhatti Wado in North Goa. It is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. We were helped by helpful locals who piloted our cab on their bikes to reach Bhatti Village.

Bhatti Village is named after the old feni distilleries (Bhatti) which was there. No relation to the late Jaspal Bhatti!

It is located on the ground floor of the house where the owners live. It is divided into three sections, is not air-conditioned and has a surprisingly clean loo. The décor has barrels in which feni were kept, empty feni bottles and feni distilling machines including one from 1705.

It’s a bit of a Fawlty Towers experience at Bhatti Village barring the chaos and rudeness of Basil Fawlty.

The smiling owner of Bhatti Village, Patrick, comes from table to table taking your orders. There is no menu. You eat from what is cooked that day. If you ask him, he tells you the prices.

The two of us had 4 dishes, bread and a Coke for Rs 1,000. The hotel car cost us Rs 1,500 to reach there from Miramar Beach.

The dishes are a mix of Goan and Portuguese dishes that Patrick’s wife, Merciana, cooks. The USP Patrick says is that you won’t get these dishes in other restaurants. Till pesky journalists and bloggers wrote about him in the press and the internet and people started copying their dishes!

Some of the stand out dishes that we had that night were the garam masala heavy beef croquettes, crispy batter fried whitebait and prawn guizad where the bisque like sauce was packed with the flavours of prawn.

I would go there for the food as much as the atmosphere.

Photo credit: Kalyan Karmakar

Follow him @Finelychopped