Spicy Bella

Canadian cousins invite us over to dinner at a place they've discovered - Spicy Bella somewhere in Colva. Google maps insists it's Spicy Bellla. hmm..

I'm not feeling well, and if I were I'd have wanted to go for the FG Goa match but duty calls and sis and I fight our way through what I call clutch pedal traffic*.

*That's when you're in a jam, that inches forward randomly the moment you think of switching the car off. So you have to sit there, left foot on the clutch, right foot on the brake, tapping the accelerator just enough to move an inch forward  every now and then. And no, you cannot switch off and allow the car in fron to move a couple of feet forward before you switch on again cos you're surrounded by cars and gnats bikes trying to cut the line.

So getting back to my sorry tale... We reach. The place looks inviting, colourful. Hmm.. I can't see any TV. I was promised a TV so I could watch the game. Grrr...

Ah.. cousins message and say come upstairs. Maybe that's where the TV is.

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Okay. The TV is a little 20 inch screen. And I can't even grumble cos apparently the owner carried it up just cos they requested him and set it up and all. I'm grateful... honest I am. But he's so smug!

The game was fun, the food - not.

They ordered fish cutlets. The chef said he didn't know how to make them. They tried explaining, but the instructions clearly weren't getting thru. Later we realised what a blessing that was.

Most of the food ordered as starters was spicy - tasty also... yay for them... but spicy - decidedly not yay for me with my bad throat. One bite and I'm coughing so badly, I run to the loo so that I didn't end up peeing right there! I decide to order butter garlic squid - tasty and non-threatening and hard to get wrong. It's not on the menu, but they have recheado squid and other variants, (and the owner has just finished bragging how they've been there for 5+ years and are known for their quality and have survived because they are the 'REAL DEAL') so I'm quite confident.

My confidence was misplaced.

The squid comes, thick and tasteless. Rings clogged in thick cream. Not even salted properly. I eat one spoon and then leave the others to suffer for my mistake. They manfully finish it. We all agree that we're gonna stick with the menu for the mains and give thank's that we didn't get his version of fish cutlets.

We ask the chef to recommend the specialties and he starts rattling off Murg Lababdar, and Murg somethingdar and Murg somethingelsedar. Forget the restaurant being here for 5 years - at this point I think these are north Indians who've just landed in Goa and their Goan dishes are clearly just guesswork. We decide to play it safe with Biryani and Alu gobi. The food arrives, we eat and leave.

Click a picture to rememeber the evening, walk to the car, and offer to drop them off. The boys say they'll walk it out. Cousin M says she'll come with us cos she's starting to feel queasy. While we're debating whether the guys should just get in with us, she feels worse and runs back into the hotel to use the toilet. Uh oh. They're supposed to be flying out the next day. This is not good.

Well we drop them off and head home and suddenly sis says, can I open the window, I don't feel so good...

Verdict: Wild horses wouldn't drag me to Spicy Bella ever again. If I see that lying owner I'd be so rude I'd get kicked out anyway.