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Oct 07, 2023

Assagao’s newest hidden bar is an ode to the Goan tavern

By Megha Mahindru Anyone who has ever eaten at Fig & Maple’s Goa outpost cannot

By Megha Mahindru

Anyone who has ever eaten at Fig & Maple's Goa outpost cannot help but notice how enormous and empty it feels. Built around a sprawling Portuguese bungalow, it would seem the restaurateurs overestimated tourist cravings with their 10,000 sq ft space.

When I first mentioned the sheer magnitude of the space to chef Radhika Khandelwal last October, she nodded like a wise sage who could foresee the future. Turns out she knew what she was doing. In just seven months, the restaurant has expanded to host a series of community-led farmers’ markets, housed a sustainable fashion store, shot up its produce of garnishes, vegetables and herbs at the in-house garden and is now planning to become an incubator for artists and small businesses with their forthcoming lineup of pop-ups. Her latest offering, Cajoo's Bar, opened off-season this May, is conceived to appeal to a newer clientele that goes beyond the Goa tourists—the neighbourhood locals.

In many ways, Cajoo's, a dimly light bar located on the first floor of Fig & Maple (F&M), is the antithesis of Khandelwal's bright and big arch-restaurant. For starters, it's not a quiet, rarefied dining space but a clamorous and cosy community dive which can comfortably seat 20 or accommodate up to 90 standing tipplers on a packed night. "Cajoo's actually allows us to use this space to its full potential," she adds.

Unlike F&M, where the menu features an incredibly creative smattering of unfamiliar sounding dishes, Cajoo's has no fine-dining tropes and offers a menu of homey and comforting bar staples such as pork chilli fry and garlic cheese poee. Even the portions here are not as dainty or restrained as its counterpart downstairs: At Cajoo's, the plates are loaded with glorious chucks of meat and bowls come brimming with golden, salty, crispy fish fingers.

Despite her small bar menu, Khandelwal manages to do an excellent job of fulfilling the cravings of a late-night boozer. "I’m also working on a post-midnight menu, served in prepackaged boxes that people can take home or heat themselves on the microwave," she shares. Like any good community bar, her idea is to create a space that feels so much like home that patrons wouldn't mind giving a helping hand now and then. The sort where the bar owners can placidly leave closing duties to the last people standing.

It's true, the space has a warmth that feels like you’re sitting in a friend's living room and Khandelwal's food itself tastes like home. Her two spaces, however different, share a commitment to having seasonal, locally sourced ingredients as part of the menu—whether it's watermelons from Parra or bimbli and kokum from the restaurant's flourishing garden. "A perk of having a blackboard menu is the ability to change it every week. At Cajoo's we will serve lepo during lepo season and sardine when it's in season," she adds.

Evocatively and accurately named, Cajoo's is inspired by the ubiquitous tree of Goa, which is known to produce popular beverages like nero, urrak and feni. "Cajoo's with its hyperlocal concept is our love letter to Goa," adds Khandelwal, who will soon launch a special feni menu alongside a bar nuts menu that celebrates cashews.

Ria Gupta

Priya Misra

Arundhati Ail

Ria Gupta

The best part is it's cheap and cheerful—a rarity on the stretch in Assagao where it's located. The food and cocktails menu, priced between Rs 30 to Rs 450, span everything from beer and bourbon to fries and curries, casting back to simpler times when affordable bars were a norm. "With Cajoo's, we wanted to level up the neighbourhood bar game, and create a community space that redefines and challenges the notion that a local bar can only serve substandard or generic food and straight drinks," adds Khandelwal, whose culinary creativity goes way beyond the tavern samplings of chana and bhikna (peanuts).

In 1984, when a new state law presented locals with the opportunity to convert a traditional tavern to a bar (if only it had washrooms and served Indian-made foreign alcohol), a rush of dimly-lit establishments began to wane and metamorphosed into bars.

Today, a handful of next-generation bar owners in Goa are harkening back to the humbler iterations of a neighbourhood bar. At the forefront of this revival are no-frill spaces like Cajy in Arpora, Pablo's in Assagao and Joseph's Bar in Panjim, which are bigger than the hole-in-the-wall establishments of the past but tight enough to become that equaliser that brings together everyone from a well-reputed writer and to a beloved village drunk on a long, soggy night.

With peeling walls, low lighting, plastic chairs, a carrom board or a showcase of generations-old garrafões as its defining design motifs, the community bar is an invigorating crowd-puller because of its ability to lift spirits by being easier on the pockets. Such spaces are regular haunts, where the bar owners know customers on first-name basis and often grant them generous pours in exchange of a good story. "There's something about these places that makes us go back again and again; in Goa, we don't end up revisiting a good restaurant as often," notes Khandelwal.

Ria Gupta

Priya Misra

Arundhati Ail

Ria Gupta

Cajoo's, with its rattan barstools, squiggly neon lights, porcelain plates, highball glasses, delicate kunbi saree napkins (and most importantly, clean washrooms!), confounds expectations. It may be a serious upgrade from the typical neighbourhood bar, but it is imagined without any unnecessary gimmicks, as a space that is relaxed and convivial (complete with a dart board and a carrom table). The vibe may be far from fancy, but it somehow feels perfectly fine.

There's something about discovering a good local secret. And Cajoo's, hidden from plain sight, is ostensibly as discreet as a speakeasy (and open until the wee hours of the night). To diners at F&M who are not in the know, it may even go completely unnoticed.

On the Wednesday night I visited, it was impossible to gauge the liveliness and euphoria of a karaoke night that welcomed me upon arrival. Here, after adequate lubrication, strangers beaming with buoyancy, unleashed an unclenched raucousness and formed an inexplicable bond as they cheered one another by crooning in pitch-imperfect voices while gorging on Khandelwal's menu that seemed designed to appease barflies coming off a long, drunken night.

Behind the bar, Ravish Bhavnani, Khandelwal's mixologist husband, comped off drinks for a select few talented singers—a fitting trophy for a karaoke championship in a bar. Even for his modestly priced bar menu, Bhavnani does not skimp on the accoutrements—his thrilling concoctions that celebrate Goa's produce with its ingredients and names like Parra Proof, Keri, Bimbli and Arambol, offer competing flavours in glasses rimmed and coated with coarse salt or flavourful flakes of chilly.

Karaoke or not, the duo's plan is to make this two-room space an intimate spot for casual drinking nights. It's difficult to determine whether their newest experiment will succeed in bringing footfalls, but in the post-pandemic Goa, it's safe to say their triumph already lies in reviving a much-missed dive culture that has now become a rare commodity.

Cajoo's is open on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 7pm onwards. A meal for two with alcohol costs Rs1,000-1,200. Address: Fig and Maple, 1st floor, 140, Bairo Alto, Assagao. Instagram.