North Goa is better with a kitchen

Goa's restaurants are fine. Its fish market is better, and the gap between the two is the argument for staying somewhere with a kitchen.

Go to the market early

Early means early. What is good goes first, and by the middle of the morning you are looking at what nobody else wanted. Take cash and take a bag. Ask what came in today rather than what you feel like — the answer to the first question is a better dinner than the answer to the second.

Buy what is in front of you

Mackerel and sardines are cheap, plentiful and better than the expensive options. Prawns are worth it. Kingfish is the safe crowd-pleaser. Anything that looks dull has probably been there a while, and eyes tell you more than gills.

The rest of the shopping

Bread from wherever a local queue is forming. Kokum, if you can find it, for anything sour. Coconuts, feni if somebody in the group is curious, and far more fruit than you think you will eat, because you will.

Then let somebody else cook it

The trick at a villa is that you do not have to do the work. You come back with a bag of fish and a conversation happens about what to do with it. Recheado if the kitchen will make it; otherwise simply grilled with a little masala, which is what most Goan households would do anyway.

Eat on the terrace

This is the real reason. A table you are not being turned out of at half-past nine, with people who have been in the sea all day, and food that was swimming this morning. Restaurants cannot arrange that.

Crestwood has a full kitchen and a roof terrace facing the sea. See villas in Goa.