Viva O Viva at Goa Niwas in Delhi has been offering fine dine Goan cuisine for quite a few years now. Exploring new taste is my primary motivation to visit a restaurant, so when I had initially come to know of Viva O Viva, somewhere around 2012-13, I must have visited the place thrice in quick succession. During the same time, I visited Goa twice, so after all these visits my hunger for vindaloo, xacuti and peri peri fry decreased and I decided to take a long break from Viva O Viva. The break was almost for four to five years.

It was a last-minute decision to visit the restaurant recently as we were in a fix about whether to go to the newly opened canteen of Assam Bhavan or Viva O Viva, and we opted for the later, giving weight to our long absence from the restaurant.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the interior, which resembles with an over-packed Goan house. The menu is neatly written on a white board and offers around twenty different dishes in a day. The basic segregation of the menu could be made into seafood, chicken and meat, vegetarian and desserts.

In my opinion, if you are not a native to a particular region then it’s better to be not very experimental because not every unknown dish will suit your palate. We ordered for Goan fish curry and Peri Peri prawn fry. The Goan fish curry essentially consist of rava (semolina) fried fish in a coconut gravy. If you are not a fan of coconut gravy then one can also opt for the red spicy gravy; since we had opted for peri peri prawn fry, we decided to keep the gravy light.

We initially thought of going for the Mackerel fish gravy, but settled for the King fish gravy as they offer one whole Mackerel and not everybody is comfortable with the fish head. In case of King fish gravy, they serve well-cut three pieces. The price of King fish gravy is higher. A Mackerel fish gravy costs Rs 350, a King fish gravy costs Rs 550, peri peri prawn fry costs Rs 495, a plate of Basmati rice costs Rs 100 and pao costs Rs 30. All the prices are inclusive of GST.

Vivi-O-Viva scores very high on hospitality. Hospitality just does not end in being polite to your guests, but extends beyond that. The restaurant owner is kind enough to ask the guest if they need more gravy. We were pleasantly surprised when we were asked about the same.