The setting

Drive south from Panjim for about an hour and you reach Cansaulim, a village that is still, somehow, mostly fields. In November, the paddy is thick and tall and the colour of wet moss. The light turns gold a little earlier than it should. And in one specific coconut grove bordering those fields, Fazenda Cazulo and Urbanaut set a single long table for 100.

This is The Feast in the Fields -the best Goan meal most visitors will never think to look for, held in a location you cannot usually access, hosted by one of the state's most quietly important cultural custodians, and now, for its 2026 edition, cooked by one of the chefs most responsible for taking Goan food out of its vindaloo-shaped box.

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A rare table, a rarer location

The thing to understand about The Feast in the Fields is that neither the setting nor the format is replicable. Private paddy fields in South Goa do not open up for lunch. A table that seats 100 strangers at once does not happen in restaurants. The combination (the live harvest in the background, the coconut grove, the long communal table, the view from Cansaulim that stretches uninterrupted into the next village) is a once-a-year window.

This is why the feast has become one of South Goa's must-do experiences in the three years since Urbanaut and Hansel Vaz launched the first edition in November 2022. Not because it is marketed as one, but because the people who have been quietly report back that there is nothing else in Goa quite like it.

The lore, as told by Hansel

Hansel Vaz is the proprietor of Fazenda Cazulo, the hundred-year-old family distillery in Cuelim that has become one of the most important champions of feni in the country. Robb Report once called him the Renaissance Man of Cazulo Feni, which is accurate but understates the role. Hansel has been the central voice carrying feni beyond Goa's borders for a decade now, and in the process has become one of the state's most generous storytellers of its agricultural and spiritual history.

At the feast, he does what he does best. Walks guests through the story of the land they are sitting on. The lineage of the Goan landlord's feast. The seasonal rhythm of a working rice field. Why feni is more than a spirit and why the paddy harvest matters beyond nostalgia. It is the kind of context that would take years to acquire on your own, delivered at a long table with a cocktail in your hand.

The 2026 chef: Rahul Gomes Pereira

The menu this year is the piece most worth paying attention to. Chef Rahul Gomes Pereira, known as Picu, takes the kitchen for 2026.

If you have eaten at Jamun, his fine-dining restaurant in a 153-year-old Goan family home that he restored and furnished himself, you already know what to expect. Picu is one of the small handful of chefs doing the serious long work of lifting Goan cuisine onto a contemporary stage without stripping it of its soul. His approach is heritage-first: recipes handed down through generations, wood-fire cooking, smoking, terracotta, bread baked in his own wood-fired oven. His tasting menu at Jamun is a reimagination of Goa itself

Bringing Picu to a traditional Goan landlord's feast brings a contemporary palette to a format that has always been rustic, communal, and comfort-forward. The dishes will still read as Goan to anyone who grew up with them.

The afternoon

Guests arrive by 12:30 PM. Classic feni cocktails with a twist, courtesy of Jerry's Cocktails, meet you at the entrance. There is live music. There is a live cooking station. The harvest unfolds in the background throughout the afternoon.

The spread is a proper Goan landlord's feast, this year interpreted by Picu, drawing on seasonal Goan ingredients and the kind of dishes that used to anchor long communal lunches at village feasts.

Come, take a seat.
24 November 2026, 12:30 PM onwards · Cansaulim, South Goa

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