Naasi and Mee
Today is a special day for me. I ticked off an item from my bucket list taking my mom to a really good non-North Indian, South Indian restaurant. I have been earning for years now but I have never paid a single restaurant bill whenever I go out with my mom. It’s always my mom. My mom sends me a lot of food reels every day for us to try and explore, but we always end up going to our usual 2 spots mainly because I’m too lazy to try out different food and I prefer eating at the same spot again and again. I convince myself that if I didn’t get sick last time, I won’t get sick this time either. Also, my mom is a vegetarian and I am a non-vegetarian, so finding spots that we both enjoy is very hard. She is fine sitting with me but I can’t order many non-veg varieties and she can’t order many veg varieties either, because it’s just the 2 of us. So I usually adjust to eating veg with her and we keep going to either geetham for South Indian or gupta for North Indian, and keep repeating it over and over for years now. Every time my mom keeps nagging me saying food prices are expensive and we shouldn’t come to these restaurants ever again, but we always end up at these 2 spots. These two spots are the only famous good spots in my area so they’re always crowded we have to first scan a QR code, fill in an on-the-spot reservation, wait 30-40 minutes outside in the FIFO queue for seats to be allocated, and then enter. We always feel sorry for others standing outside, so we order just the usual dosa and poori, quickly finish eating within 10 minutes, and leave so the next batch can come in. We can’t even eat with proper peace of mind or have a conversation.
One big bucket list item for me is to take her to a place that doesn’t serve the usual cuisine, where she shouldn’t worry about the price and can enjoy not just the food but the whole experience. Even if she doesn’t like the food I’m okay with it, but I want to at least expose her to various food palates. So I decided to take her to a South-East/East Asian restaurant Naasi and Mee.
Here are my rules
- Cuisine she has never tasted
- Dishes she has never had
- Veg options not very different from non-veg
- I want to try a lot of different dishes so I don’t want to stuff myself with just the main course
- Food should be less spicy and slightly bland if possible, else she will not eat
- Neither extremely rushed nor completely empty somewhere in between, with ample time for us to sit, eat, and enjoy the meal
- Less use of coconut oil (we both hate the taste sometimes when mixed into a random dish the food starts to taste like bathroom cleaning phenyl)
Honestly, I had no idea what to eat or order I didn’t understand a thing in the menu when I googled it. But I didn’t want to go in empty-handed, as she would quickly get annoyed and order the most familiar stuff she knows. Also, a lot of South/East Asian food is non-vegetarian, so I wanted to pick the right food choices beforehand to make her experience good. One main aspect of hospitality I truly believe in is the effort we put into making people around us happy and comfortable. When I opened the menu card I didn’t understand anything, so my first step was to learn to read the menu, pick food items beforehand, and note them down so I could go there and straightaway order. Just like any tech bro, I had only one option ask my boy Claude. Took a screenshot of the menu, dumped a bunch of preferences, and asked it to pick food items.
Step 1 for me was to understand the lingo: naasi, mee, maki, sushi, sashimi. Forgive me if you’re a local and I’m misinterpreting this, but as per my understanding naasi means rice and mee means noodle varieties.
I watched this YouTube video to understand the difference between maki, sushi, nigiri, and sashimi. I might be completely wrong please take this with a pinch of salt. What I understood is that technically sushi refers to the seasoned vinegar rice, not the raw fish. Because of this, any type of food that has this rice can be called sushi. Maki is a type of sushi (the rolled one), while sashimi isn’t sushi at all it’s just meat. There are a whole lot of variations in preparation as well. There’s also nigiri both Maki and Nigiri qualify as true sushi because they use seasoned vinegar rice, but the difference lies entirely in how the rice and toppings are structured and rolled. Still learning, long way to go but for a 2-hour research session I learnt just these basics to understand their differences, enough to read the menu. Also learnt about a few popular hybrid variations of sushi like Philadelphia, California, Vegas, and Hosomaki. I love this sushi world once I get more exposure and knowledge I’ll hopefully write about it. This is the YouTube video I used to learn, apart from googling.
Learnt about dim sum and dumplings wasn’t very interested because they look very similar to kollukattai.
What did I end up ordering?
Honey Chilli Lotus Stem my mom loved it. She told me she ate lotus stem 20 years ago in Punjab, but there they just boiled it and served it plain. I think she liked it because her expectations were very low. It was an average eat for me.
Vegas and California Maki these 2 are hybrid variations that are a good intro to the sushi world. The Vegas maki has hass avocado, asparagus, cucumber, red pepper, iceberg lettuce, cream cheese, and black and white sesame seeds. I chose this for her thinking it would be mild and slightly bland. She didn’t praise it much but still ate it completely, so I’d give it above average. The California roll is the beginner variant which consists of hass avocado, crab stick, cucumber, tobiko, and Japanese mayo. I loved it. I think I can promote myself to salmon maki variants next.
I ordered myself Malaysian Chicken Satay Malay-style (that’s what they told me) chicken skewers with a slightly sweet and spicy taste. I eat any cooked meat without complaints. When compared to the bland, dog-food-style chicken I cook every day for myself, anything and everything tastes better.
A Garlic Fried Rice variant I like the roadside ajinomoto-ed fried rice more than this.
Then got 3 juices: Watermelon Splash (watermelon, mint, orange, and apple), Mango Tango (coconut milk and mango), and Crushed Mint and Lime. I liked the Crushed Mint and Lime the most. Mint and Lime > Watermelon > Mango.
My mom was pleasantly surprised that I paid the bill without even glancing at it (she didn’t know I had done all my mental maths before ordering xd). She took a bunch of photos and flexed it with all her friends. Overall a fun day with a lot of learnings. One more check mark ticked off my bucket list lot more to go!