Lounge
This Goa café sources coffee from the North-East
Summary
A new café named Alag in Siolim has coffee from little known regions, like Tripura
It all started with cheesecake. Specifically, a cloud cheesecake — bright yellow, pillowy soft and decadent. The year was 2021. Musician Uddipan Sarmah (from the band, Aswekeepsearching) and his partner, Bompi Angu, were living in Assagao, Goa. Angu is a baker and her speciality is cloud cheesecake. “There were too many for me to eat alone so we thought of starting a home bakery," says Sarmah. It did well—she would bake, and he did deliveries.
It started with four cakes a day and was “fun". When four became eight, and they started getting orders from South Goa, they decided it was time to find a physical space. Three years and many iterations later came Alag, a speciality coffee shop. The three month-old café sits in the backyard of a house in Siolim, just near the main church. Alag is accessed by a narrow pathway on the side of a white house. It is a small, cute space. A small outdoor seating area, under coconut trees, leads to the indoor part of the café. Inside is all white, with a section showing off the merchandise—tees, bags and postcards—and a glass-fronted cupboard with Angu’s baked goods including the famous cloud cheesecake.
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The cheesecake does justice to its name, and is light, airy and fluffy. It is not the only star coming out of her oven. There’s the shokupan, Japanese milk bread, also soft, fluffy and cloud-like. The shokupan makes up the savoury part of the small menu, turning up in hearty sandos like the Egg Bacon Toast where crispy bacon pairs well with soft scrambled eggs;Egg Sando, an upgraded version of the humble egg sandwich with a 24-hour marinated ramen egg surrounded by a boiled egg and mayo mix; and the Chicken Sando with crispy fried chicken is given a touch of sweetness with Texas barbecue sauce. Of note are New York-style chunky cookies (100gm each) in flavours like almond croissant, matcha, Biscoff and double chocolate. While delicious, they aren’t heavily sweet or rich. “We will not serve anything we can’t have ourselves multiple times," he shares.
Ask Sarmah for suggestions, and he will proudly point to the coffee menu. He “did a deep dive into coffee" two years back, and today, moonlights as a barista. Expectedly, the coffee (divided into black, white, and coffee refreshers) is good. The Dirty Matcha is a refreshing drink, with a double espresso shot adding a nice kick. Saigon Coconut Coffee is a coconut milk and condensed milk pairing that is cold, creamy with just a hint of sweetness. “A lot of people here don’t want to experiment with coffee. Good coffee is not just about spending money and buying expensive coffee machines. It goes down till the water you use," he says. When the couple moved to Siolim, finding good coffee was a challenge. It is why they thought the neighbourhood had potential.
The café took three years to come to fruition because the couple spent time working on every aspect themselves including building the space—it was an outhouse used for storage and they expanded it to create the café. “Everything was slow, easy, and meant to be longterm," he says.
Alag is a lesson on ‘How to stand out in Goa’. It reflects in their name and in a character that pops up all across the café. Call it their mascot—it is there on the café window, painted on the wall, on the coasters, their takeaway boxes, and even on their merchandise. On the main door, the eye of the character is closed but walk in and you find it open. “You are inside Alag so you are alag." “It [the character] is about standing out. It shows how society is going in one direction all the time, and we are in another," he says.
Alag even has a loyalty programme. Customers get a percentage of each bill credited as cashback. “It makes daily consumption easier and more affordable for regulars." In three months, Alag has steadily amassed regulars — Sarmah says at least 300. While dining there, a bunch of them walk in. They give out their standard orders and have playful fights over who will pay, and thus get coffee credit. At the same time, a tourist couple storms out on hearing that there’s no cold coffee. Their grumbling can be heard all the way out. Sarmah isn’t fazed. “We are very specific about the kind of crowd we want, and the kind of products we offer," he says, and adds, “We push ourselves to live upto our name, Alag."
Sarmah is from Assam and Angu, Arunachal Pradesh. They source their coffee exclusively from the North-east; all their staff are from the region too. “We want to tell stories about the North East," he says, pointing to the books on display, and even the framed wall-hanging behind the coffee counter. “It’s a fabric that is worn only by the women in Angu’s tribe…each tribe has their own fabric," he says. Despite being a coffee shop in Goa, and having WIFI, they have a strict ‘no laptop zone’. They want this to be a coffee and conversation kind of place, with a side of cheesecake.
Joanna Lobo is a Goa-based journalist.
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