Cooking, Fashion and Cigars

LAST time I was in Goa, I skipped bathing in the clear blue waters, sunning myself on the sun-kissed golden beaches, paying obeisance to the Gods at the white-washed churches and drinking feni at the beckoning tavernas. I was on a fly-in, fly-out business trip. But I could not avoid eating at Wendell Rodricks�s new restaurant Aubergine despite my whistlestop visit to his gourmet city. Everywhere I drove in Goa, huge hoardings screamed out at me from between swaying palms and above dusty roads, telling me to visit Aubergine, Wendell�s boutique, bar and restaurant in Arpora. If I tried to ignore those, there were the other hoardings advertising Wendell�s studio in Panjim, Design Space. These regular reminders made it extremely difficult for me to slip out of Goa without calling on her high priest of fashion and food!

Aubergine has been cleverly designed inside somebody�s ancestral home in Arpora village, Bardez district, equidistant from Mapusa and Calangute. It is off the beaten track, no doubt, but by the time this little eatery is a year older, I am certain all tracks from the neighbouring towns will lead to Aubergine. It is a friendly little place of 35 covers, admirably managed by Wendell, his partner, friend and cigar aficionado Jerome Marrel, and the French classic cuisine chef Patrick Le Clerc. If you go there for lunch or dinner, one or the other of them are always there. If all three are at Aubergine the day you go, consider yourself blessed. I was lucky. Even as Patrick was taking down my order (he was doing the ordering!), Jerome rolled up in a cloud of Cohiba smoke, and a short while later Wendell himself came in, a mobile growing out of his ear. My lunch turned into a riot!

The food at Aubergine, I must tell you, is quite unlike anything else you will get in Goa. It is a daring combination of French, Indian, and Goan cooking. The style of cooking is basic, but the flavours are intense and wholesome. Patrick, who comes from a catering background in Normandy, has sought to give the foreign dishes an Indian flavour. French recipes with Goan products and vice versa.

�Take our signature dish,� he told me, �It is Aubergine Lasagne by name, but really your baingan bharta on home-made sheets of pasta with tomato sauce and cheese.� It is a good combination, not a properly-properly French creation, but not very Hyderabadi too. �Try our Papillotte de Poisson Farci Beurre Nantais,� suggested Patrick. �Go on, don�t be scared by the name, it is fish fillet with a prawn filling steamed in banana leaf and topped with white wine and butter sauce.� Later, when I was through, he supplied the verdict too: �Yummy, eh!�

Aubergine�s menu has been created and executed by the talented Patrick, but it has not gone by without Wendell giving it his designer�s touch. Wendell, I did not know, had passed out of the catering college in Bombay and then did a stint of cooking in Muscat before fashion designing seized his fancy. He still is reported to be a good cook, though he restricts himself to the kitchen at home only and leaves Patrick to manage the range and hot plate at Aubergine. But his influence on Aubergine�s menu is evident. Several of the most popular (best-selling!) dishes here are made from his recipes, these are of food that he has learnt people enjoy most in Goa... Indian and foreigners.

The kind of people I found lunching at the other tables at Aubergine that afternoon, were mainly Indian tourists. The foreigners come there between October and February. This is one restaurant that is open during the monsoon too. The local Goans come in then. They are not crazy about classic French cooking. No creme de la creme stuff for them. Besides, Patrick said that it would be impossible to create that kind of food here because French cooking required quality products. �I use local products from Panjim and Mapusa and try to enhance their quality,� he said.

According to Jerome, Aubergine is the kind of place to eat fusion food at, meet friends, it is a boutique for Wendell�s clothes line, and the only bar in Goa where you can get Cuban cigars. For this last accomplishment, Jerome pats himself on the back. He is authorised to get the cigars which have been imported to India, and then sell them at Aubergine. People buy them, people smoke them there, in fact, Jerome has even created an after-dinner cocktail to go with cigars.

�It is a mixture of cognac and rum into which I have infused cinnamon. We call it Melta Abajo after a place in Cuba where they grow tobacco.

� He is one of Goa�s biggest cigar smokers himself and apart from being in partnership with Wendell in fashion and food, is the executive vice-president in the Middle East, Far East and India for Compass - the largest food service company in the world. In his humidor at Aubergine, you will find affordable cigars for Rs. 95 like the Belinda and expensive ones for Rs. 440 like Montecristo.

Wendell cannot differentiate between fashion and food. �I dress women, now I am dressing salads,� he joked. �The jobs are the same, the people I deal with are the same. Both are service-created businesses. You need to create the ambience to sell fashion and food. I deal with colour and taste all the time, but in a different sense. At Aubergine, I have created some of the dishes. Patrick is so good with my recipes. My touch is there in the ambience at Aubergine, the decor, the way the menu looks.� I asked him over my dessert, why they had chosen to call the place Aubergine. Wendell replied, �We wanted to call the restaurant by the name of some colour. Mango seemed appropriate, but too Goan. Patrick said use a name that sounds English and French. So I hit on Aubergine... because it is also my favourite vegetable.�