(Note: Guest post from one of the coolest Kasa staffers we’ve ever had. He’s currently on the Appalachian Trail for the next three months, craving Indian food no doubt. We hope to have him back in our midst when he’s done.)
I always thought the best thing about Kasa was the people behind the food. From the get go, Tim was the most upfront, sincere, willing person I ever got to work for. He opened so many doors for me when I arrived in my new city. I have more gratitude for you than the ball in the end of this stick can roll out.
Now, we all know about Anamika’s dynamite recipes. But if you get a chance to spend any time with her, consider yourself blessed. Food is far from her only strong point. She is a delight to be around, eating or not.
Suresh has a way of making you smile on your worst of days.
Just a perfect trio.
The guys in the back could wear out an army of ants and make it look easy!
Then there is Polly. Oh my……..Polly. I will miss you the most, simply because you drive me the craziest. I love you!
Kalyan works harder than two of me combined.
I feel good leaving with the knowledge that the new crew is just as fun as the last one.
And with a persistence as strong as time, you will be steady on my mind.
Slumdog Millionaire, set in the slums of Mumbai, is playing at the Castro Theatre on Friday night. I’m going to do a tribute to one of my favourite cities in the world and make Kasa’s Friday special to honor the ultimate street food of Mumbai.
The question is…what is the ultimate street food of Mumbai?
It’s a tough choice based on the memories a person associates with their street food experiences, but I narrowed it down to a few based on my own childhood memories of Mumbai:
1. Pani Puri on Chowpatty Beach – some of the happiest moments of my life were here as a kid on vacation from boarding school with my mum, super late, hot night, sand in my hair, trying to fit a whole puri in my mouth without dribbling everywhere.
2. Kwality Vanilla Ice Cream – Nothing has ever been able to touch the taste of this creamy white ice cream that I would hunt down on a hot night after an exciting night of clubbing (bollywood stars/mafia/regular people all in one club).
3. Bheja Masala Fry – This one is strange and, had I known beforehand what it was, I would never have tried it. But, I was a kid and had been to a late night street festival (I think in Byculla) and was hungry. My mum’s boyfriend at the time told me to try it and I loved it. Turns out I had just eaten ‘Masala Fried Lamb Brain’ with Roti. It’s popular street food in Bombay because it’s so GOOD.
4. Pav Bhaji – So this one WINS. It simply hits the spot at any time. The spicy, buttery, lemony, potato mash on buttered white buns and crunchy red onions is the ultimate comfort food. If you’ve never had it, imagine a vegetarian sloppy joe with delicious bread and tons of flavor.
Nothing can beat eating it standing up on the street, but I will seek to do it justice at Kasa on Friday evening.
I’d love to hear your Indian street food snack experiences, so leave them in the comments below. Or tweet them @kasaindian.
Anamika
P.S. Check this Mumbai street food video out…just watching it makes me crave the food!
It seems like our whole family is into the world of restaurants. Suresh has a large family. Three older sisters and brothers-in-law (two sets of whom own Chaat Cafe), a bunch of nephews and nieces, their wives and of course his parents. Whenever we get together, the focus is almost always on food (along with sports unfortunately). We often joke as to what would happen if we took those two things away.
Sitting around, we are always talking about the restaurant business, be it our latest Yelp reviews, strategies, sharing tips back and forth and what the rest of the family thought of their latest food experience at our restaurants.
Suresh’s mum is, of course, our most brutal critic. (Move over, Michael Bauer.) We panic when she’s coming to eat and try to ensure the food is at its ABSOLUTE ABSOLUTE BEST. If she is happy, all is well. If not, we know we have some more work to do and that is always exhausting when you are already trying your best.
One recent funny discussion between Aman (Suresh’s nephew and Chaat Cafe’s head chef) and I was over the definition of Lamb Vindaloo. Both of us are Punjabi, but on occasion we both do regional Indian specials. He was surprised as to why I don’t put aloo (‘potatoes’ in Punjabi) in my Vindaloo. I told him that was not traditional and that I had read that ‘Vin’ was vinegar and ‘Aloo’ was garlic in Portugese and those were the two main components of the dish, with no potatoes. (The dish arises from when the Portugese colonized Goa.)
We just looked at each other pretty sure of our own positions. Aman’s younger brother declared a ‘Chef Off’ to conclude the debate, so we had to Wikipedia it.
Turns out we were both kind of right. It is not traditional to add potatoes, but has been done so much that it has kind of become tradition. I guess it’s because of the confusion around Aloo being part of the word Vindaloo.
As a side note, according to Wikipedia, there are some Indian restaurants serving ‘Tindaloo’, which apparently means an extra spicy version of Vindaloo. Aman is convinced (and I’m with him on this) that it probably was a typo at a restaurant that was then covered up with this extra spicy story.
The different number of fake Vindaloos that we came up with after this had the family in fits of laughter for a while. The worst of the bunch was ‘Been da the loo’ (when you’ve had too much vindaloo), which kind of signaled that we had to end the joke.
I find it fascinating that the regional distinctions in India are so vast not only in cuisine but in culture and language. Even within a region, from home to home, traditions vary widely on a recipe. I hope that we will see more and more regional Indian cuisine become popular in San Francisco.
I had the blues today. Not entirely sure why, but I had them. It could have been the hangover I had from the wonderful Malbec I enjoyed at Hotel Biron yesterday with Suresh on my much deserved night off, or it could have just been life. Unfortunately I’m prone to being thrown into the pits of despair. (Hotel Biron, by the way, is the bomb! It’s dark, small, friendly with an amazing selection of rich deep wines and some strange pictures on the wall.)
Things that feel good in the moment, however, often tend to leave you feeling not so great the next day. It seems pretty unfair to me, but ‘it is what it is’.
Dragging myself to work today was tough. All I wanted to do was eat, eat, eat and sleep some more. I asked Suresh if there was an INSTANT cure to a hangover. His response was to do a shot! I couldn’t stomach that, so I took his second suggestion instead of popping an Advil.
I got to Kasa kind of slowly, with all the staff noticing my low energy and asking if ‘la patrona es triste’. I just said yes and prayed my mood would not affect the daily specials I had planned to cook.
Phirni with fresh cut strawberries and rosewater
I focused on the cooking and really entered a quiet zone. The beautiful yellow of the pineapple I was cutting for the new Pineapple Chicken dish stood out as HAPPY against my sadness. The luscious bright red of the strawberries mixed with the green mint jumped out to me and screamed HAPPY. The sweet smell of the rosewater mixed with sugar going into the Phirni reminded me of HAPPINESS.
Finishing my work for the day gave me a sense of accomplishment too, especially when I tasted the food and was HAPPY with my work.
I still felt down the rest of the day, but just being able to notice the small things in life that make me happy and feeling a sense of accomplishment even on a tiny scale gave me hope that I can find my way out of feeling sad.
So I’m the third member of the Kasa ownership team, the most invisible because I kept my day job in order to keep the lights on should Kasa stumble and, most painfully, the one who chose the short straw and became Kasa’s Chief Financial Officer.
The best thing about being the Chief Financial Officer is that I get a fancy sounding title. The list of the worst things about being the Chief Financial Officer is much longer and includes:
Having to enter around 20 fields of data into Quickbooks for each day of sales. Typically the fields of data include numbers that were illegibly scribbled by Tim, Anamika or one of our other great staff during the hustle and bustle of the day. Trust me, it’s exactly as fun as it sounds.
Having to organize, 3 hole punch and enter all our bills into Quickbooks. That includes our daily deliveries from our produce and meat vendors, twice weekly deliveries of our spices, thrice weekly trips to farmers markets with scribbled (yet again) receipts, payouts to our nightly cleaning service, beer and wine deliveries, dry good deliveries, flower receipts from the vendor down the street and so much more goodness.
Paying all our bills on-time so our vendors continue to love us. This is…stressful.
Reconciling all of our accounts each month. Now you might ask…what does it mean to reconcile each account? Great question. It means going back through every single transaction — every bank deposit, every individual expense, etc — and categorizing it, confirming that it’s accounted for in our bank statements and that our ending balances in Quickbooks are the same as they are in our bank statements.
This may not sound like much, but when you factor in the many unexpected laptop crashes, accounts that don’t balance, receipts that have gone missing and so much more wacky fun, one can start to understand why many restauranteurs advised us to outsource the bookkeeping function as quickly as we could. But that would be far too easy (and expensive).
I’d much rather be in the restaurant, rocking a dinner shift and chatting up our customers, but for now, you can find me at home many nights after work, watching Eastbound & Down, engaged in an epic battle with Quickbooks.
If you want to share tips, or want advice on how we set things up financially, or just need moral support as you struggle through restaurant bookkeeping, feel free to hit me up (contact at kasaindian dot com or @kasaindian on twitter).
