Tag: Restaurant Reviews

A Goan breakfast at Casa de Goa

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There is this lovely, almost hole-in-the-wall Goan restaurant in Hounslow called Casa de Goa that has been an absolute gem of a find. They have few vegetarian dishes but boy do they make them well! 
We sometimes pick up a side dish or two but I had been wanting to have breakfast there for so many months now and it finally happened. And I chose to make a beginning with the Goan style puri bhaji. It seemed the most exciting of vegetarian options offered to me and though I knew you cannot go wrong with a puri bhaji, I was a little skeptical of how different a Goan puri bhaji can be. Trust life to remind you to not judge and walk in with preconceived notions. This bhaji was different and splendid – it was a mix of Patal Bhaji made with dried peas soaked overnight in a paste of coconut and spices (I could smell and taste coriander and cumin and red chillies) and atop it was the Potato bhaji which also had a gravy consistency. I absolutely loved it. I am definitely going to try making this myself because God knows I can eat a couple of plates of this on a weekend. 
K ordered the ros omelette which is an omelette in a chicken xacuti curry served with pav and as tempting as it looked, I could not taste it but he loved his breakfast as well! The pav was just okay and not the kind of pav you would eat if in India.

The chai – what songs do I sing for the chai served in my favourite kind of glass? It was sweet and hot, just the kind of sip you want as you dip your poori in that hot gravy. It is so affordably priced and so easy to miss, it truly feels like a find. And you know what? It is, the kinds to keep. 

Getting to the restaurant:

They don’t have the most updated website and calling them is your best bet.
Website: https://casa-de-goa.business.site/?hl=en-GB
Address: 113 High St, Hounslow TW3 1QT (they are located near Shri Krishna Vada Pav and opposite to Madras Flavours)
Phone: 07808 197021
They do deliver through Ubereats, Just Eat and Deliveroo based on your location.

Lunch and a story at The Eagle, Cambridge

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A week ago, we drove to Cambridge with a friend who was visiting us from Singapore. It was such a wonderful trip (more pictures and snippets on that soon). I want to quickly share a little accidental discovery that we realised later and the irony of it.

It was one of the hottest days in UK and after being toasted and roasted and crinkled from the sun (it is a thing here too, people), we decided to walk into a restaurant that catches our fancy; after all, our intuitions with food have been good in general. As we walked along Benet street, we came across “The Eagle” and we absolutely loved how dated it was and how much of a character it had. It is a traditional 16th century English pub with wooden flooring and just a very lovely rustic feel to it that I love.

They only have a couple of vegetarian options and I chose the mushroom ragout with pasta and a fantastic garlic bread to boot and some lentils. The meal was very good with the only shortcoming being the low spice and flavour in the lentils.

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So here is the juicy part – apparently, this was the place where Watson and Crick announced that they had discovered the “secret of life”. I was just reading more about this pub while posting it on my instagram and then saw that it has such a juicy piece of history. I do not know for sure how true this is, but isn’t it fantastic when something like this happens to you? To have been in the place where the discovery of DNA was talked about – the secret of life, indeed! To imagine the kind of curiosity, condescension, wonder and hesitation that may have greeted such news!

We all strive to become someone, to do something significant with our lives, to make a discovery, a change that touches one life or a few, that leaves us immortal, makes us proud and gives our short time here some greater meaning – and to have shared one such space for a brief moment albeit years later, is a happy reminder to prod on.