Goa Revisited: A Bar, a Beer and a Beach Resort

In late 2020 when Covid was at its awful height, I bailed out and traded Gurgaon for Goa for six months.  It was the single best move I made during the entire two years of the pandemic. I made lots of new friends, I discovered Goa from the inside out as a tourist-resident and I was productive as a travel writer when all other opportunities were lost.  See my reflections in Conde Nast Traveler.

This year the siren call of Goa lured me back.  Having spent those six months from October 2020 to March 2021 I was much clearer in my mind as to what I wanted from the place.  It HAD to be somewhere I could walk to the beach and swim in the sea. For me that is the single most important thing that defines Goa. (See my whimsical post on my relationship to the sea!)

So, Vinod a good friend from Bangalore I had made on my previous sojourn found a bare-bones 2BR rental just off Morjim Beach and we arrived there just in time for Holi.  In my view Morjim is the single best beach to go swimming in North Goa with its gently shelving and broad beach and waves that don’t knock you flat, interspersed with the ubiquitous shacks to replenish oneself.  And it is just far enough North that one escapes the tourist hoi-polloi that throng the likes of Baga and Candolim ruining their ambience and attraction for me.

The great thing about Goa is that it is always changing.  It is an amazing hub for creativity and innovation and so attracts people from all over India and the world who want to try out something new. Even in the few months I had been away new booze brands had appeared on the scene and new food joints had opened. I love the buzz and the vibe of the Goa scene.  But let me open with a visit to someone I knew from my first stay.

The Bar is For the Record:  The first time I met Buland Shukla it was in the company of my friend the founder of Samsara gin Aditya Aggarwal who is profiled in my piece on The New Spirits of Goa for Travel+Leisure.  We had just closed out a promotion of Samsara in Fontainhas and strolled down the road to check out Buland’s brainchild For The Record, a new vinyl bar. With a name like that you would be forgiven for thinking “Haryanvi wrestler’’ but nothing could be further from the truth!  Buland is a tall, slim, dapper guy with a carefully crafted look: trademark black fedora which he is never without, neatly trimmed goatee and a friendly welcoming personality and smile that belies the slightly Satanic overall impression.

Continuing with the Satanic analogy, Buland describes FTR as his horcrux which I interpret as somewhere he has buried a piece of his soul – but in a good way rather than in the dark sense of Harry Potter’s nemesis Voldemort!  The journey which he has taken is a fascinating one and testimony to his versatility, his passion and his drive.  Buland was trained as an architect at CEPT in Ahmedabad but his heart lay in music first as a guitarist and later as an audiophile. As he says “when I first picked up vinyl records from a flea market, I was just mesmerized by the idea that this piece of plastic actually contained music in its grooves.” And so, the dream was born.

He decided to bring the pleasure of truly high-quality sound to people by opening a record and turntable store Goa Audiophile then realised that he needed a high-fidelity vacuum tube amplification system to do the vinyl justice.  Not having the money to buy one, he taught himself analog electronics from scratch and built his own vacuum tube amp and speakers which occupy pride of place at FTR.  The narrow dimly lit bar opens onto the record store at the back and you enter into a vinyl lover’s wonderland with a collection of over 400 records while the walls are plastered with record posters ranging from New Orleans jazz to Classic Rock. The finishing touch is provided by the unique cocktails made only from feni and other indigenous craft spirits, another Buland twist which distinguishes his bar from everybody else in Goa.

I caught up with Buland at FTR along with a couple of other good friends, Anthony Gaskell (an old Etonian who lost his way and settled in Goa decades ago) and IIT graduate Desmond Nazareth, the pioneer who still carries the torch for craft spirits like agave and mahua (see the same T+L piece on the new alcohol ventures in Goa)  Each one of these guys is an absolute character who couldn’t possibly exist anywhere else but Goa. Someone once described it as “a place where all the misfits from everywhere else come to fit together” and this couldn’t be truer of my three buddies.  When you visit FTR don’t miss out on the amazingly delicious array of fermented cuisine including sourdough pizza and miso batter mussels (Buland’s latest efforts at fermenting various condiments and combining them with familiar dishes)

The Beer is Maka Di:  I landed in Goa the day before Holi but already had a promotional party lined up at the invitation of Sarika Varshnei, the effervescent First Lady (and self-styled Chief Growth Officer) of Maka Di the new craft beer to explode onto the Goa scene. Sarika is as fruity, frothy and friendly as one of her beer concoctions and I found her dancing her head off to my personal favourite the very catchy Tu Mera Hero at the new Autumn Moon restobar in Assagaon where the party was being held. Plenty of Maka Di (which translates as Give Me! in Konkani) was available to sample and I went through the whole range – Bavarian Keller, Belgian Blanche, Belgian Tripel, Honey Ale, Maka Shandy and Rose Brut IPA – each with its unique flavour profile and imaginative label featuring an astronaut.

The craft beer label is a very loosely bandied about one, although as hundreds of craft beers sprout up around the world, efforts are being made to tighten things up.  Probably the best description comes from the American Brewer’s Association as a small (less than 6 million barrels annually) independent (not owned by a large corporation) brewer. And the small batch size is what allows the craftsmanship to come in through introducing different flavours and nuances into the beer using botanicals like citrus peel and coriander.  Maka Di certainly ticks all these boxes and has taken over an old McDowell’s whisky distillery and revamped it into a modern mechanised beer brewery in Latambarcem near the Maharashtra border.  Currently they are running at their full capacity of 144,000 cases and the bestsellers are the Bavarian Keller and the Belgian Blanche.

In her comfortable office at the brewery, Sarika explains how her whole family is involved in the venture. Her husband Pradeep, who has a lot of previous industry experience, first identified the McDowell’s distillery, set up the plant and now acts as chief guide and mentor. The Maka Di venture served as a platform to attract back elder son Ishaan who is the CEO, from the US where he was an investment banker. And the management team is completed by younger son Anish, who along with his team of scientists and researchers, conjures up the magic that goes into the Maka Di bottles. Anish is a trained chef from the Culinary Institute of America and had earlier allied with Mom to run a lounge bar called Boca Loca in Candolim so hospitality comes naturally to both. Maybe you could even say the family that brews together stays together!

The Beach Resort is Alila Diwa Goa: In my first season in Goa I had been an invited speaker at Pechakucha, a challenging Japanese concept where you have to present your thoughts in twenty slides which move through at one per twenty seconds.  Trust me this is much more difficult than it sounds! This time around I attended the edition celebrating Women’s Day with an all-woman roster of speakers and met the charming Vaishali Bali who heads PR and marketing at the luxury resort Alila Diwa Goa and was presenting brunch vouchers to the speakers at the end.  She very generously added me to the list as PK alumni and so I made the long drive down from Morjim to Majorda Beach with my friend Ravi Kambhuj the PK franchisee in Goa.

Alila Diwa in Sanskrit means ‘’surprising gift’’ a delightful name which entirely befits the resort as it sits in sylvan surroundings with soaring palm trees and lush paddy fields overlooked by its massive infinity pool. While not strictly a beach resort, you can sense the opening to the sea and Majorda beach in the distance through a gap in the trees. Their Sunday brunch is legendary in South Goa for its sumptuous selection of world and Indian cuisines including salads, mezze, soups, pizza, chaat, grills, kebabs and main courses and unlimited alcohol (Rs 2199 + taxes). Ravi and I tuck in with relish to this delightful spread before carrying our beers outside to enjoy the pleasures of the infinity pool – a really great way to spend a Sunday! The kitchens of Alila Diwa Goa (run by the Hyatt group since 2018) don’t only churn out wonderful food but they have extended the concept to their Spa where the massage oils are blended in consultation with guests and customised to the needs of their own body. Quite a unique experience like being at a pasta station and instructing the chef on what herbs and sauces to use!

When I was writing a story on sustainable tourism in Goa for CNN Travel, I profiled Cabo Serai but the second name on the list was Alila Diwa Goa. They are the first hotel in Goa to have installed an in-house water bottling plant which eliminates the guest need for 350,000 single use plastic water bottles. To minimize the environmental aspect, the resort was built in 2009 with a view to preserving and integrating the majestic old banyan trees and existing vegetation into the design. All materials used in constructing the hotel were sourced locally and this is immediately apparent in the extensive use of Goa’s characteristic brick red laterite stone throughout the buildings. Metal dispensers and glass jars are used wherever possible and I was impressed by the use of plates and bowls made from fallen areca palm leaves for outdoor catering events. This helps save on water needed to wash the crockery and is environmentally friendly since they are biodegradable and compostable. Sustainability is obviously dear to the heart of this wonderful South Goa resort.