Fernando and Griselda speak of their venture which is a representation of globally accepted concepts with a local touch
Our White Door is a family run catering business, by Griselda and Fernando Monte da Silva. While Griselda is a chef who has worked in the culinary space across several cities in India and overseas, Fernando is a photo-journalist, and food and travel writer. The two decided to tinker with Goan food in order to make it more appealing to today’s audience, for whom photo-friendly food is paramount.
Fernando speaks on the idea and inspiration behind Our White Door. “We were looking for people who could work with what we had in mind – a slightly left of field menu – for the evening festivities. Unfortunately, we wound up coming short on that front. When we realized, to quote U2, that we couldn’t find what we were looking for, at the time of the wedding, we understood that there was a niche of sorts. There was a dearth of caterers who were willing to approach food other than the manner familiar to them, with regard to being hired to handle large-scale events in Goa – in 2017, the literal ‘hired gun’ in the culinary space in Goa was hard to come by. We decided to fill that gap, by cooking for those who needed the kind of services that we provide.”
The idea was to give clients the liberty to decide what they wanted to eat. “In Goa, as consumers ourselves, we often find that people give you a list of what they make, and you have to pick your various courses from those pre-set lists.”
Both Fernando and Griselda feel that dining shouldn’t be a complex affair. They sit down with their clients, chat about dietary restrictions, allergies, and flavour-profile preferences. Most importantly, they look into memories involving food. They often have to take into consideration that a memorable meal can evoke all kinds of emotional responses, and they want to create as many favourable memories as possible. Once they collect this data, they go back and craft a menu, accounting for the kind of service the client wants, the number of courses involved, and all the restrictive factors mentioned above. Every menu is a one-off created for the event in question. Their signature dishes are always a labour of love, a representation of globally accepted concepts or dishes with the incorporation of a local ‘hero’ or focal point. One of the best examples that they can point out is their ‘Dodol Samosa’, which has been lauded as ‘a must-eat when in Goa’, and now gets sent off to people across the country. They were the first people in Goa to commercially make Japanese Cheesecake, known in social-media circles for its characteristic ‘jiggle’, and airy texture. They have finally launched their own custom versions of the profiterole. Fernando explains about their two variants of profiteroles. “Our own signature variants include two interesting combinations. The first is filled with mango crème pâtissiere, with a thin layer of white chocolate on top of the choux bun. The mango puree used to make the cream is sourced from an Afonso mango tree that is standing on the plot of our ancestral home since 1969. We preserve all we can until it runs out, and then wait for the next crop to repeat the process. The second of these variants is the Triple Chocolate. We use various kinds of chocolate in the crème pâtissiere, and different avatars of these for crunch and dusting as well.” They try to shop local, for dishes where they don’t need to use imported produce, and in the process, wind up buying from small scale farms and village-based suppliers. It was precisely that ideology that led to the creation of their uber-popular, eggless ‘Tambdi Bhaji Quiche’.
The lockdown, they feel, has been a double-edged sword for them. In many ways, there have been surges in orders, especially with less people going out to eat, and more people ordering in. It helps that they deliver their food across Goa as well. However, the downside is that there has been a surge in people cooking from home. As a couple who runs Our White Door, there is a broad division of tasks. Griselda is in charge of the kitchen and Fernando handles operations. However, they are both very fluid in the way they work and at the end of the day, it is a team effort. It’s just the two of them running the business without any staff, and they are grateful for the help and support received from everyone who comes forward to help them when they need extra hands on deck. Fernando goes on to speak about roadblocks and difficulties faced by them in their line of work “It can sometimes be hard to get through to the local population to try something new; to take a risk on the unknown. In Goa, we find that people prefer to stick to the dishes that they’ve tried and tested, rather than along the path less taken. Another issue that we often face is that having to pre-plan isn’t looked upon favourably. People are used to being able to walk into a store, and pick things up from a shelf, so sometimes when we say that we have a 24-hour turnaround window, it isn’t seen as a favourable factor to account for.”
They sign off with a message to aspiring culinary artists. “I think there are two things we’d like to talk about on this front. The first is to pick an area that you’re good at, or a kind of cuisine that really interests you, and do all you can to be good at it. The second, and we can’t stress on this enough, is make sure that every single aspect of your costing is accounted for. A lot of this happens because in Goa, people are largely self-sufficient. People often fail to account for cost of time, which could go into doing something else productive, and needs to be paid for. I think that these two things are both supremely important in getting costs on point, which at the end of the day is the difference between working hard and working smart”
