It was nearing midnight. Roy Menezes had just wrapped up a shoot in Goa’s Calangute when someone suggested a dinner of pork chops. It was common knowledge (even then) that when it came to barbecued meats, all roads led to ‘Lloyd’s’ — a name that has now become synonymous with Goa’s culinary landscape. As Roy and the team headed to Lloyd’s, directions were made void by the aromas of smoking meats that served as a better guide.

On reaching, they were greeted by a humble garage space, featuring five tables and a colossal vessel, being managed by a woman — Celia Braganza. Her son Lloyd Cipriano Braganza, meanwhile, commanded the barbecue. As Roy recounts this anecdote to The Better India, he says the pork chops that day did more than assuage his hunger pangs, instead also giving him a yardstick against which he would measure all future dinners.

“I still insist that no place on the planet can parallel the pork chops at Lloyd’s,” he smiles, branding that day as the start of a beautiful friendship with Lloyd and his cooking. Since then, every trip to Goa sees Roy making a pilgrimage to Lloyd’s for an indulgent platter of pork chops.

“It’s the way they cook the meat, the smoking technique, the marination. The way they put it all together is just beautiful,” Roy, a hard-core loyalist of the chops, endorses. But the biggest standout for him is the consistency that Lloyd has managed since 2002. All this talk about pork chops has gotten Roy visibly excited about his next trip to Goa. But this time, he won’t be heading to the garage, but instead to a revamped ‘House of........

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