From IT heir to chef: How Arati Naik is reviving Karwari cuisine through her supper club

A Karwari thali prepared by chef Arati Naik (Photo by Sankhadeep Banerjee)

In late 2019, she enrolled herself in a four-and-a-half-month culinary certification at the Leiths School of Food and Wine in London. She had planned to stage at a restaurant there but then the pandemic hit. Within months, she and her parents relocated to Goa. When things opened up, she had to decide what to do next. “Goa was booming. I thought of opening a restaurant but because everybody here knows Goan food, I decided to tap into another childhood memory and my fascination with tapas bars in Spain,” she says.

“I was fascinated by the tapas bars — you eat something small here, something small there, have a drink, move on.” Goa, she felt, understood those flavours. “I thought: why not open a Spanish-Portuguese tapas bar here? It felt natural. The seafood, the history — there’s a connection.”

Today, she is the chef and owner of Isabella’s Tapas Bar in Panaji, which opened in September 2022, as well as the keeper of a cuisine most India doesn’t know exists.

The morning we visit, she is preparing a Karwari thali. On the counter is fresh mackerel, clams, pineapple, a bunch of methi, dried mango and a tin of roasted mustard. She begins with the pineapple sasam. “Sasam means mustard,” she explains, adding, “In most Karwari food, we use roasted mustard and roasted methi. When you grind roasted mustard, that preparation is called sasam.”

Her earliest food memory, she says, is cinematic. Her nana would wake before dawn to meet fishermen as their boats pulled in. Mackerel, caught fresh, would be thrown into a pit dug into the sand, layered with hay and dried leaves, lit, and buried. “Hay-smoked mackerel — no seasoning, nothing. I remember the fish coming out charred black, skin peeled off, eaten right there on the beach at 4 or 5 in the morning. I’ve been obsessed with smoking fish
ever since.”

The thali she serves during her supperclubs are structured like a tasting menu. “We do it course-wise,” she says, as the first round comes to the table: chutneys, pickles, and kismores of smoked mackerel. Chicken xacuti, a festival dish in Karwar, arrives with dosa. Then the seafood: tesray sukkhe, clams dry-cooked until they yield; dhabdhabe, to be eaten with polle, bhakri or chapati. Rice comes last in the fish sequence, and only then does dali toyi appear, the simplest, most grounding dish on the table, a thin lentil preparation that asks nothing of the palate. The meal closes with solkadi made from dried mango and coconut, and is eaten with rice. “That’s the last thing you eat,” she says.

She is particular about the vegetarian thali too. “Just because someone is vegetarian doesn’t mean you give them one dal and one sabzi and call it a thali.” “We overcook vegetables in India,” she says. “Everything becomes soft. But you have to retain the crunch. It changes the entire experience.” These details — heat, texture, timing — are what separate the food she makes from what most people expect when they hear the word ‘home cooking.’ There is one exception to her restraint with heat. “The only thing I cook on high flame is prawns,” she says. “Very quick. Toss and done. Otherwise they turn rubbery.”

But if you think Karwari is the same as Goan, stop. “The ingredients, the chillies, the souring agent — everything is different.”

In her bid to popularise the cuisine she is among the few custodians of, she has finished writing a cookbook titled ‘Jev’, collecting recipes from her mother, her maasis, her nani before she passed. “This is not community-specific food,” she says. “This is what you’ll eat in any house in Karwar.”
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Recipe for Prawn Dhabdhabe

A coconut-based prawn curry, delicately spiced and comforting. Traditionally enjoyed with soft polle or dosas, this dish celebrates the subtle flavours of the Karwari coast

Serves: 4–5

Ingredients

l 300 gm medium-sized prawns, cleaned and deveined
l 2 medium onions, finely chopped
l 1 tbsp ginger–garlic paste
l 1 green chilli, finely chopped
l 1 medium tomato, finely chopped
l 2 tsp homemade garam masala (preferably Konkan-style)
l 1 tsp coriander powder
l 2 tsp Kashmiri
chilli powder
l 2 tsp coconut oil (or any neutral oil)
l 1 cup coconut
milk
l Salt, to taste
l Fresh coriander, finely chopped (for garnish)

Method

Heat the coconut oil in a kadhai or deep pan over medium heat. Add the chopped onions and sauté until they soften and turn translucent
Add the green chilli, ginger–garlic paste, and a pinch of salt. Sauté until the raw aroma disappears
Stir in the garam masala, Kashmiri chilli powder, and coriander powder. Cook for about 30 seconds, allowing the spices to bloom
Add the chopped tomato and cook until soft and pulpy. Sprinkle a little water if the mixture feels dry, and continue cooking until the oil begins to separate
Add the prawns and cook on a high flame, stirring gently, until they are nearly done
Lower the heat and pour in the coconut milk. Add salt to taste and simmer briefly, do not overcook
Finish with fresh coriander and switch off the heat, and serve hot with soft dosas or steamed rice