Are you looking for the most exquisite seafood known to man? Join us on a 700km pilgrimage along the Indian coast… by bike… to the heart of Konkani cuisine.

Some seafood hides in the depths. Some almost trips you up.

It’s dusk on Day Two – and every few hundred metres, dark mounds loom up by the road, with people milling about them. In the half light, you could mistake these inky bollards for sleeping policemen.

The road becomes one long, openair market for people to harvest kallumakka and sell them

But because this is the Konkan, the mini pyramids are a local delicacy: kallumakka

For one short stretch of the coast, the balance of fresh and salt water is the perfect environment for the giant green Keralan mussel. In these bays, kallumakka grow in profusion, and the beach road becomes one long, openair market for people to harvest them in piles and sell them.

Locals tell us there’s only one place to savour this mussel: the Hotel Jineesh.

We find the building at sunset, sitting at the quiet crossroads of a one-horse town. With a weathered exterior that says the Hotel Jineesh has been here forever, this restaurant serves just one dish: kallumakaya variattiyathu…  a curry of mussels, garlic, ginger and curry leaves.

One ingredient, served one way, by one man.

Pure genius.

Famous Indian chefs and food bloggers both shun the word ‘authentic’. They say there’s no right or wrong ‘way’ to cook anything, no such thing as ‘the’ recipe.

I have a parallel truth.

To eat a dish that only exists in one place in the world – prepared by a man who’s dedicated his life to cooking it… can’t we call that ‘authentic’?

When the chef retires, will a GenZer pop up to serve kallumakka the way they’ve been cooked for generations?

We’re the last guests of the day, and there are only two portions of kallumakaya variattiyathu left. We take them both, with a paratha. The mussels are sublime – plump, seductive… and overflowing with local context and meaning.

Leaving the Jineesh at sunset, I try to picture this restaurant in the future. When the current chef retires, will a GenZer pop up to serve kallumakka the way they’ve been cooked for generations? Will they dedicate a lifetime to serving just one dish, that’s woven deep into the local culture?

The Hotel Jineesh is a milestone on our pilgrimage. If it ever changes, the world will shrink a little – and India will lose a sliver of its history.

But is it the last word in seafood cuisine?

We cycle on.

Travel on with us on our Konkani pilgrimage

Scroll down for the next chapter: ‘Back of the Net’