Where to eat in Goa: from beach shacks to clifftop tables
Goan food is not one thing. A shack lunch, a Saraswat kitchen and a clifftop dinner are three different evenings — here is when to have each.
The food is one of the few things about Goa that everyone agrees on, and also one of the easiest to get wrong — mostly by eating every meal in whichever shack is nearest the hotel. Three kinds of place are worth planning around.
The beach shack, for lunch
Shacks are best in the middle of the day: fresh catch, your feet in the sand, and no reason to be anywhere else for two hours. They are seasonal structures, so which ones are standing depends on when you come.
Pousada by the Beach, CalanguteTables beside the sand, and an easy lunch.The Goan kitchen, for the actual food
This is the meal people fly home thinking about. Goan cooking is coastal and distinct — the Catholic and Saraswat traditions are not the same, and a good kitchen will tell you which one you are eating. Book these; the well-known ones fill up.
Mum's Kitchen, AnjunaHome-style Goan cooking, and a good first education in it.The Fisherman's Wharf, PanajiRiverside, and reliable for a first Goan meal.The clifftop dinner, for one night
Goa's view restaurants sit above the sea in the north, and they are an occasion rather than a habit — you are partly paying for where the table is. Worth doing once, at sunset, with a booking.
Thalassa, SiolimGreek food on a clifftop terrace; book the early sitting for the light.Antares, VagatorThe other clifftop option, further round the headland.
