The New York Times

SUNDAY , MAY 5, 2002

foreign restaurants as well.

My companion, Franco and I started and ended our first trip to India in January in Bombay , a vacation planned around a conference in New Delhi. Without the language or friends our experience was bound to be limited. But though we cautiously eschewed the much-loved street food, we also ignored the five star hotel dinning rooms, in search of a more typical experience. In the end we tried a very different restaurant, from medium-elegant to quite casual, each representing a different element in the wonderfully gastrotomic mosaic of Bombay Indian,Seafood and Goan.

GOA PORTUGUESA
The state of Goa, south of Bombay, on India's Malabar coast, is a former Portuguese colony; its cuisine encompasses Portuguese dishes, such as Caldo Verde (Vegetable soup) but is also characterized by strong flavors (fiery Vindaloo is Goan) and tropical notes, such as lots of coconut. It also makes exuberant use of many New World ingredients such as cashews & olives that first entered India through the port of Goa.

This splendid Goan restaurant is about 10 miles in the heart of tourist Bombay, halfway to the airport, and our midweek dinner there on the way to our night flight made a delicious and diverting farewell to the city. The dinning room was brightly fighten with a tropical theme ( a second room, with bar is entered through a passageway ). A roving guitarist in flowered shirt and straw hat, and a giant screen television set, suggested that a ouster night might be a three ringcircus. We were coddled by a pleasant staff in loose shirts and sarongs. The menu (or menus, including a children's menu a specially South Indian menu and a Goan Menu , when we stuck to) is a long page turner. There is also wide choice of exotic cocktails, feni and handful of Indian & imported wines we'd met elsewhere.

Goan food can be fiery, but our Pomfret Curry , in a rich, red coconut based gravy, served with lots of rice, was mild and flavorful. We each had two magnificent Tiger Prawns, rubbed in spices , grilled and beautifully moist. The three sauces presented with them(garlic

butter, a Portuguese brown sauce and a Goan masala) seemed like gilding the lily. But Cashew Coconut Suke , in which soft strips of coconut are delicately spiced and sauteed with tomatoes and green onions, was outstanding.

A moist dark jaggery cake "Dodol" tasted deliciously of raw sugar (jaggery), and the Goan classic sweet , "Bibinca" was a wonderful sticky mutilayer cake made with coconut and banana.
This was a restaurant to return to again & again, we decided, to savor its layers of flavors Like the bibinca. Like Bombay itself.
Prices, at 50 indian rupees to the dollar, are for a meal for two , without drinks except where noted.