In Goa, the odd bar is going mainstream

There are many factors that can take a bar from good to great: quality food, well-crafted cocktails, local brews, the vibe, and, of course, the people behind the bar—the owners and the staff. In Goa, bar owners have been working hard to find that sweet spot, especially since the pandemic, when city quitters swarmed the seaside state and the neighbourhood dive bar turned into a cross between a beach shack and Colaba Social. Panjim was suddenly party central, and the line between Gurgaon and Assagao started to blur.

“The pandemic saw an influx of people, and many new places opened, both good and bad,” says Arijit Bose, the brains behind some of India’s more craft-forward, experience-driven places, including Bengaluru’s Bar Spirit Forward and most recently, Goa’s Bar Outrigger. “The bad ones have shut; the best ones are thriving.” The ones that got it right, Bose suggests, were the ones that were able to create quality experiences. “People remember a shitty drink for ₹500 vs ₹700 for a great negroni. So you need to make it special, and you have to leave people with a great memory.”

Now, Goa is seeing a cluster of new bars that are two drinks away from being called ‘immersive experiences’—bars that themselves have main character energy. At Bar Outrigger, a rum-loving cocktail bar located in a fishing village in Dona Paula, guests sign up for a nautical experience from the get-go. Every time you WhatsApp them to reserve a table, the reply includes a treasure hunt-style map to find your way from the parking lot to the bar. There’s a rum-forward cocktail menu, personalised sailor-style greetings written in chalk for every guest who has made a reservation, plus a delightful closing routine—a rendition of ‘My Heart Will Go On’ from Titanic by the staff and some patrons.

Half an hour away is the newly opened Loulou, tucked away on the top floor of the popular French restaurant Assa House in Goa’s Assagao. Loulou is the third speakeasy-style, late-night cocktail bar to open its well-disguised doors in North Goa in recent times, after Bar 1240 and Room One). A narrow flight of steps leads to a luxurious room that is headlined by a 110-year-old John Broadwood piano. Loulou’s interiors look straight out of a movie—a Parisian speakeasy where bold colours, vintage tones, velvet, and brocade create cosy nooks for friends to gather, with the smooth sounds of jazz in the background.

“Goa was never about luxury, it was about a more local experience—sitting on the beach,” says Nitin Wagh, one of the owners. “But Assagao was always different. It was [about the] creme de la creme. I wanted to create something luxurious, something for the well-travelled customer seeking special experiences.” At the centre of the Loulou experience is an eight-course cocktail menu that he and his staff describe as a “carefully designed journey”—kind of apt given that the inspiration for the bar itself came from Wagh’s travels to the Riviera. “I wanted to recreate that feeling of being disconnected from the outside world.”

While the story of Loulou stems from a deeply personal vision, for many restaurateurs, following the unique-experience trend is a matter of necessity. “There’s an over-supply of bars in Goa, so you have to do something different to stand out,” says Vaibhav Singh, who founded India’s OG speakeasy, PCO, in Delhi in the mid-2000s, followed by wine and cocktail bar Perch, first in Delhi and now also in Mumbai. These days, he spends most of his time at MTW in Panjim. MTW is designed as an after-work watering hole; very meta considering it’s basically the office of Nao Spirits (Greater Than, Hapusa), which turns into a bar at night.

This after-sunset alter ego takes its role seriously. Workstations stay put, but laptops and notepads make way for endless bowls of crisps, the lighting shifts from warm yellow to deep red as the night rolls on, and the office-themed cocktails—named things like Orientation, Chai Break, PFA, and Out of Office—hit the spot.

For Singh, the key is walking the tightrope between having a fun theme and not letting it become a gimmick. “Whatever you’re building, it needs to be authentic. That’s why Joseph Bar is what it is,” he says, referring to Panjim’s most famous ‘local’ bar that has made it to the biggest tourist maps and is perennially packed. “It’s brilliant. But if you try and recreate that same success somewhere else, there’s no guarantee it will work.”

In today’s world of increasingly discerning customers, it’s no longer possible to fake it till you make it. Or as the folks at MTW would say, authenticity is the real KPI that will keep the regulars circling back.