Idli-sambar on the beach may not have quite the #vacay vibes that tourists in Goa are going for, but according to Calangute MLA Michael Lobo, it is the beach shacks’ insistence on serving the south Indian breakfast item that is driving foreign tourists away from the sunshine state’s famed shores. Politicians do as politicians must, and it is easy to dismiss Lobo’s heart-cry as being rooted in the kind of nativist impulse that, in the 1960s, fueled the Shiv Sena’s agitation against South Indians in Mumbai, when the vada pao was first held up as the Marathi manoos’s response to the “lungi-clad outsider’s” idli-dosa. But look carefully, and the picture becomes muddier than the waters in which Goa’s beloved shevto (striped grey mullet) thrives.

The steady rise in the number of domestic tourists has diversified Goa’s restaurant cuisine — including the food served in the seasonal shacks — in a way that was, perhaps, not imaginable a couple of decades ago. If........

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