Goa New: Street Food

A plain omelette is set on a plate and hot xacuti-style gravy is ladled over it, then eaten with pav to mop up. The ros is usually chicken, sometimes chickpea for vegetarians. Carts set up in the evening and trade until midnight. It is the single most recognisable Goan street dish and costs very little.

Cured Goan pork sausage is fried with onion and sometimes potato, then packed into a split pav. The vinegar in the sausage soaks into the bread, which is the point. Stalls sell it from late afternoon. It is sharper and more sour than any other sausage roll in India, and needs a cold drink alongside.

A flattened patty of minced beef or chicken is crumbed, shallow-fried and served inside a pav with onion and a smear of chilli sauce. Goan bakeries and market stalls make the cutlets in batches through the morning. It is the standard mid-afternoon snack for office workers in Panaji and Margao.

Half-moon pastries are filled with prawns in a thick béchamel, crumbed and deep-fried. The recipe is Portuguese rissóis, carried to Goa and adapted with local prawns. They are served hot, two or three to a plate. Bakeries in Panaji sell them alongside patties and croquettes from mid-morning.

Smaller and thinner-skinned than the North Indian version, with a filling that runs to potato, beetroot and green peas, or to minced beef and chicken. The pastry is closer to a spring roll wrapper. Bakeries fry them to order in the evening. They are served with a thin chutney rather than a thick one.

Goan bread leavened with toddy and baked into a hollow, slightly sour pocket with a bran crust. The poder, or bread seller, still delivers it twice daily on a bicycle with a horn. It is torn and used to scoop curry rather than sliced. Fresh poi from the morning round is noticeably better than shop stock.

A spiced potato dumpling in gram-flour batter, deep-fried and served in a pav with dry garlic chutney and a fried green chilli. It came to Goa from Mumbai with migrant workers and settled at bus stands and market corners. Stalls sell it from breakfast onward. It is the cheapest hot snack in the state.