The Spice Route

You can find The Spice Route tucked away at G8 Monalisa in the Naikawaddo area of Calangute. We’ve been running this place for a while, right in the middle of all the Goa buzz. It’s not a massive restaurant, just a comfortable spot where we serve the food we know how to make. The kitchen gets hot, especially during the tourist season when the streets are packed. We spend a lot of our time sourcing ingredients from the local markets nearby. Sometimes the delivery truck is late, or we run out of a certain spice, and we have to scramble. That’s just how it is running a kitchen here. We have a few tables inside and out, and the walls have seen a lot of diners over the years. Most of our staff lives within walking distance, so we’re a tight-knit group. We don’t have a fancy marketing team or a social media person. We just open the doors, prep the vegetables, and start cooking. You’ll often hear the clatter of pots and pans from the back while you sit. It’s a bit noisy, and the floor has some scuffs, but it feels like home to us. We’ve seen Calangute change a lot, but we just stay here at Monalisa doing what we do. It’s practical work, filling plates and making sure the kitchen is clean at the end of the night.