Michael Fisher
PANAJI: Enterprising people script their own success story. This is a story of teacher, a Konkani actor, now a practicing lawyer, who was the first to start the `Sigdi’ trend (open air oven) in Goa, not realizing that he was opening new opportunities to the would-be unemployed, he is Mr Mike Metha.
Margao street food is pretty famous and most Indian tourists gorge on the street food stalls, delicious and affordable. The street food, not Goan dishes, is a blend of various flavors that stimulate the taste buds of tourists as well as locals. In Margao alone from the KTC bus stand to the Old Market bus stand more than 30 plus `sigdi’ type portable food stalls are doing brisk business, cooking tandoori to Chinese dishes are prepared in front of the customers. The customers also ask for extra flavors such as more spice or more tanginess.
By the end of the 1980s, this illegally economy became unstoppable as scores of portable barbecue- style stalls and kiosk emerged in nooks and corners of Margao town catering to all classes. With new makeovers, these joints have jazzed up their act attracting the young ‘n’ hip and the families.
The over 100s of these roadside stalls doing lakhpati business, owe their gratitude to Mr Mike Metha, who in 1985 took over a kiosk and started the first ever roadside barbecue `sigdi’, at the vicinity of the Old Market area of Margao. He imported two cooks from Bombay and called his kiosk `Byculla Sigdi’. As time went by his kiosk became a landmark, especially for visitors and the late night workers.
His kiosk attracted Taj chefs and Goans by nature are a reluctant lot when it comes to eating at street corners were attracted to Byculla Shidi, which started serving Arab, Chinese, Mogul and Goan dishes. Seeing Byculla Shidi hogging the evening limelight, such open air stalls sprang up in various corners of Margao town to get a slice of this cake, offering similar dishes.
On an average Byculla Shidi would sell two kilos of cooked mutton and 15 chickens every evening till mid night. A year later the two cooks left, but this did not deter him, he employed locals and continued the art of cooking he learnt from the Bombay cooks. The Byculla Shigdi continued, amidst scores of emerging sigdis. Those who missed Bombay roadside food, got the taste of it again from these illegal stalls.
Then in the late 1990s, the High Court terminated all the roadside kiosks. These open air stalls created a new industry as over 1000 of them gave restaurants and hotels a run for their money. The High Court crated a state of disarray for some kiosk, who continued to operate defying the order. The Margao municipality had no other alternative, but to rehabilitate them in selective areas. They were allowed to operate only after sunset.
Mr Mike Metha’s Byculla Sigdi refused to rehabilitate would up. But he does not regret that his idea has created a local fast food industry and prays that his Divine Lord has blessed him with a restaurant called `With Love’ located at Madal, opposite the Margao KTC bus stand.
The art of cooking came to Mike by mischief. Living in Bombay in the 1960s, he and his friends would shoot pigeons perched on the Parsi parapet. He first ventured to cook, while staying as a paying guest with an elderly Indian-French couple. Creeping into their kitchen with out their knowledge and using their ingredients, he cooked up the first shiny pigeon dish and offered them to eat. They praised it to the skies.
Excited by Mike’s talents his friends and he ventured to shoot flying foxes at the Vadala five-gardens. With pigeons and flying foxes, they would come home with 20 kgs of meat daily and enjoy a hearty meal. These examples prove that any person who wants to make a fortune only needs a burning desire and some of the necessary skills. Over 100s of these now official open air portable stalls are doing roaring business in Margao.
