Well by now you guys must know that im quite fond of good food. Im originally from Goa and go there virtually every year. Over the years the prices have been climbing, every restaurant, guest house etc. but there has been one restaurant that I still truly love not only for the extremely reasonable prices but for the high quality Goan food.
Yes good cheap Goan food is tough to find in Goa, the fish curry rice is common, but then when you start looking for dishes like Chicken Cafreal, Xacutis, Caldins and Vindaloo’s thers one place I can recommend that you will not be disappointed about. On our recent visit to Goa, I took my soon to be fiance, Bhavika and a friend to Florentine, close to the Calangute police station on the way to Saligaon.
The service is a tad bit slow, I mean fast service is virtually non existent in Goa, but when you put that together with the amount of people, a mix between locals and tourists.
Sagar ordered for a Squid masala, that can be seen in the picture above the rings and on the right hand side of that is the Surmai or King Fish in Reshad masala. The squid was a little tough, so in our second course we ordered a repeat of the Chicken Cafreal, Kingfish Slices and this time Prawn Masala.
Bhavika is a vegetarian so she ordered for Vegetable Xacuti with Pois (The Goan Bread) and papad along with the beer. Thats me feasting, to be honest we ended up overeating, so much so that we had quite a tough time walking out of the restaurant. But that was alright for it was our first meal at Florentines this vacation.
As Chicken Cafreal is one of my favorite, this piece of Cafreal was all mine, my mouth is still watering as I write this post and look at the chicken below.
We were so thrilled with the rates of the food and alcohol we decided to take pictures of the entire menu for our blog. So you can go through the menu and see what Goan food you would like to feast on.
The sad part is that during this entire season I never managed to get any Shenaneos (Mussles) to eat. I really enjoy the rawa fried Shenaneos, brings back fond memories when I had gone with an uncle collecting Shenaneos in Baga creek.
The price of a large Kingfisher beer in Florentine is Rs 55 thats nearly Rs 30 less than what it costs from the wine shop in Mumbai.
We ended the meal with a Caramel custard, now the Goan Caramel Custard is actually a bread pudding. The Caramel custards made by Moghalai restaurants are really what they are suppose to be like, not that the Goan one is not good, its just a good bread pudding.
So this was not a Goan Recipe, but this blog does have the Chicken Cafreal recipe and more will be coming soon. In the meantime you may like to read about this vacation in Goa, where we visited places like Palolem and Ashwem.
