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I’m lying on a heated water mattress while a therapist works a scrub into my shoulders, and somewhere behind me, a tune is playing. I can only describe it as a lullaby in a rainforest. This is the Hydro Bed at The HVN, Amaraanth's in-house wellness sanctuary, and it is the least Goa-shack experience I have ever had within walking distance of the beach.
Shradha Binani, who converted a family property into a 12-suite hotel just off Fatrade Beach, has resisted every temptation to turn it into a resort. There's no lobby or 50-metre infinity pool doing main-character energy at you. Instead, they’ve got a 13.5-metre relaxation pool, laterite-red walls the colour of the earth they're built from, and a garden with plenty of shade to lounge around. Architect George Seemon of Stapati has done the sensible thing of leaving the bones of the original house alone and building outward and upward around them.
The rooms at Amaraanth Goa
The suites range from Comfort, Luxury and Signature, from 512 to 830 sq. ft., and share a material vocabulary of stone tiles, bamboo, wicker and cane, plus the small, telling extravagance of an open-to-sky bathtub in the higher categories. Every suite, whatever the category, comes with a butler on call, the kind of detail that changes the texture of a stay, quietly handling whatever needs handling. I had a bath under an actual tree. It rained slightly on me. I did not mind.
The food at Amaraanth Goa
Food, meanwhile, is where Amaraanth stops being polite about its ambitions. Chef Ritu Dalmia, who's spent nearly three decades making Italian food in India, curates the kitchen here, and her menu is living proof that someone finally gave a genre-defying eater the run of a Goan pantry: a South Indian breakfast with prawn balchao on the side sits next to a classic French omelette made with sourdough fermented from cashew grown on the property, next to a smoothie bowl that's decadent. Dinner’s at its best with the signature coastal thali stacked with Goan staples, alongside a saffron seafood risotto, good pizza, and a bloody good tiramisu. Ask me personally, though, and I’d say the local pan fried fish in lemon butter sauce is the dish I'd order on a loop. It’s done simply and done right.
The cocktail programme, led by Tobias Carvalho at The Lab, is doing something interesting, which is more than enough to say about a hotel bar, honestly. The Curry channels a Goan fish curry (coconut milk, tamarind, ginger, a full spice cabinet) into a tequila-based drink. Red Amaraanth builds gin and elderflower around amaranth leaf, a nod to the plant the whole place is named for. The Miso, whisky-based and built with a Goan producer's fermented miso, chocolate and butter, tastes like a dessert in a whole new avatar. None of this is trying to be a ‘Goa cocktail’ in the coconut-and-umbrella sense; it's trying to be a genuinely good cocktail made from what's growing outside.
Art does a lot of heavy lifting around the property. Subodh Kerkar and Bhisaji Gadekar's pieces sit alongside a wall of Thomas the Potter's ceramic coral, and the dining room's window cut-outs deliberately echo ship portholes, a small architectural joke about a property that's never far from the sea. Retail comes via North Goa's Yellow House Parra: textiles and upcycled goods.
All of this in a part of Goa quiet enough that the loudest thing all weekend was the rain on my open-air bathtub roof. Amaraanth could’ve stopped there and I maybe wouldn’t have been too mad.
The vibe: Your most well-travelled friend's country house, minus the awkward small talk, plus a butler on call.
The food: Ritu Dalmia's cuisine-hopping menu and a coastal thali that digs deep into Goa’s landscape.
The drink: The Lab's Curry cocktail – a Goan fish curry reincarnated in a tequila glass.
Time Out tip: Book a Signature Suite for the open-to-sky bathtub, and don't skip the Hydro Bed at The HVN.