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Tag Archive for 'Roti'

Roti and Naan Acrobatics

Published on July 22, 2011 in Indian Culture, Kasa Behind The Scenes and Staff Spotlight. 0 Comments Tags: , .

This is an amazing ‘must watch’ short video from India featuring some serious pros making naan. Their skills are unparalleled. If they didn’t make naan, they would have a career in baseball or frisbee!

I’d love to see the Health Department’s reaction to this here in the US! I reckon the health inspector would have a heart attack! Although I can’t see any particular rule being broken.

As for the customers, they would either love it or be appalled. The customer in this video does’t even blink an eye :) You got to love India for this kind of stuff.

I’m dedicating this post to our seriously hard working and skilled roti makers at Kasa. Day in, day out, they are at our roti station labouring away at making freshly rolled rotis at high speed. Our guys are machines, rolling out around 800 rotis or more per shift.

Having watched this video though, hmmmm. Roti guys watch out. It might become a job requirement to entertain us in this manner too!!

An Interview with Kasa Marina’s Tom Green

Published on July 31, 2010 in Kasa Behind The Scenes and Staff Spotlight. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

I’ve always wanted to be a talk show host, or interview people for magazines and the like.  We are so lucky to have Tom Green work for Kasa, so I thought I’d start with him.

Me –  Let’s get right into it.  Why such a short marriage to Drew Barrymore?

Tom – (goes red and starts laughing)

Me – Ok maybe too personal.  How was working on the set for Charlie’s Angels compared to here?

Tom – (laughing) I think you have the wrong Tom Green.   I get that a lot.  I get mistaken for him all the time because I look like him. Even Drew Barrymore mistook me for him.

Me – So the name?

Tom – It’s just a coincidence.  I googled it, and THE Tom Green’s real name is Michael Thomas Green, while my name is after my grandpa ‘Thomas Green’.  So my parents did not get inspiration for my name after seeing Road Trip.

Me – Tell me about the suspenders that you ALWAYS wear?

Tom – I bought them for a costume party originally and never stopped wearing them since.  I like them because they people know I’m just a little bit different.  Mot much, but just enough.

Me – And the Oliver Twist cap?

Tom – It works really well with the suspenders. (smile)

Me – Where are you originally from?

Tom – Boise, Idaho!!

Me – Wow,  what brought you all the way here to SF?

Tom – I followed a girl…

Me – Aaaah.  What was your first impression of the City?

Tom – I was pretty overwhelmed at how many PEOPLE there were, and how BIG and congested it was, I’m used to things spread out a lot more.  The cost of living is horrendous too.  But part of me loves living paycheck to paycheck.  I have what I need to just live in the present and not too much out there in the future.  But part of me knows that I should start saving and go to school.

Me – How old are you, Tom?

Tom – Just turned 22!

Me – How long have you worked with Kasa?

Tom – A year and a half now. Kasa hired me a week after I first arrived here.

Me – What do you love and hate about being a server?

Tom – I love talking to really cool customers.  Just today, this older lady told me about this awesome cookbook from the guy who started Momofuku, the ramen noodle place in NY. I also like that this city has a lot of food-conscious people who really want to talk about the food.  I like chatting to them and telling them how we cook the food here.

Me – What do you hate?

Tom – (laughing) I don’t know what it is about alcohol that makes people shout, but the super drunken crowd is not cool.   Other than that, not much.  Oh wait, I hate trying to deal with a customer in line while answering the phone at the same time — that’s a doozy.  And I don’t ask for much, but it’s always a bummer when customers don’t tip.  Even a penny in the tip box is appreciated.

Me – What are you most proud of at Kasa?

Tom – (smiling) I make pretty awesome roti and I’m really proud of my chai.  Anything I make here, I have it to a T.

Me – What’s your personal favourite dish?

Tom – The lamb curry with chutney and onions.  It kills Tim because it’s the most expensive dish! (laughing)

Me – What’s different here compared to your last job as a cook in Boise?

Tom – Everything is cooked fresh at Kasa.  In Boise, everything came frozen in a bag — the onion rings, the burger patties, the fries.  All I had to do was throw everything in the fryer. It was a really easy job.

Me – OK, last question.  What do you think of the handful of yelpers out there dissing on white Kasa servers?

Tom – That’s a tough one.  I always wish they would say it to me in person so I could come back with some sassy remark.  I like people who have fun with it though.  The other day a guy asked me, ‘What province of India are you from?”  I said, “Idaho.”  I also like when Indian customers come in and giggle at a white guy serving them Indian food!

Thanks Tom:)

You can find Tom Green at our Marina location, with his suspenders, cap and super sweet personality, making you awesome roti, amazing chai and serving you with a smile.  Don’t forget the tip though and if you are intoxicated, try and keep your voice to a reasonable tone and it’s all good.

Anamika

Meet Kirsten, one of Kasa’s servers

Published on March 24, 2009 in Kasa Behind The Scenes and Staff Spotlight. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Posted by: Kirsten

As the newest addition to the Kasa serving team, I’ll take this moment to reflect on a few things I’ve thought about in my first month of making Kati Rolls and Thalis…..

My body is still getting used to the server’s life (after having spent the past several years sitting in a cubicle at a computer) so I usually get to work feeling a little stiff, butGreen Cardamom leave energized.

To me, spice is the most interesting element at Kasa. It’s what makes our food so special, from the cardamom that I toss into our rice before cooking and the sweet cinnamon steam that wafts out as I scoop it. From the handfuls of fresh mint that I get to scatter over our onions to the mustard seeds that dot the Gobi Aloo.

But spice also complicates things when customers entrust me to steer them towards the dish with the right amount of heat for them. It’s like they’re walking in the door, approaching the counter, and asking me what song they’re in the mood for at that moment. I’ve never met them before, I don’t know a thing about them, and I’m supposed to know what level of spice they will enjoy. I’ve slowly learned to read their faces and tones and to decide pretty easily whether this is a Lamb Curry (mild and safe) or Chicken Tikka Masala (more fiery) kind of diner.

I can tell how hungry I am based on how godly the rotis smell as they’re lifted off the griddle and land in front of me to become a Kati Roll.  Sometimes the scent of the butter (ghee) overwhelms me and reminds me of Dad making pancakes on Sunday mornings growing up.

I love the routine of my mid-day sidework. Zoning and listening to music as I spoon thick dollops of cucumber raita and crunchy bites of salad into to-go containers is a nice antidote to the lunch rush before and the dinner rush that follows.

One little boy comes in after school most days and I help him learn to count money through buying Mango Lassi. He’s recently decided that his favorite dish is the Gobi Aloo.

This week, we were visited twice by a customer who taught me a thing or two about Kati Rolls. Being an Indian, she respectfully instructed me on how to create a special Kati Roll to her tastes: unda (egg) style, with cilantro coconut chutney and onions mixed right into the egg before frying.  Roll it just like that with some salt and a few more onions for crunch. I can handle a customer like that – she knows what she wants but makes me want to give it to her.

I’m heading to work in a couple hours – come visit me on the other side of the counter!

Kirsten

The Roti Story

Published on March 17, 2009 in Kasa Behind The Scenes and Running A Restaurant. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Before opening the restaurant, roti was my biggest fear.  The food I was super confident with.  Even if I didn’t have a soul to help me, I could manage the food all by myself.  The roti though!  You need skill, speed and strength to put out a huge number of rotis.  You need PRACTICE.  The kind of practice that comes from making rotis every day of your life for your large extended family for forty years or so.  Firstly I’m 33, secondly I don’t cook Indian for my family every night, thirdly I have a very small family. And then to top it all of, I’m supposed to teach this to staff who may have never made a roti before in their life.  I was scared for sure.  

Then there was the equipment.  I was used to making the dough by hand and making rotis on a tawa at home.  I had no idea how I was supposed to do this for huge numbers.  A tawa wouldn’t work at Kasa, as that only cooks one roti at a time.  Physically it would be impossible to make all the dough by hand, but what machine would I use?  There are no Indian restaurant machine manufacturers to ask.  Frankly, there are no Indian restaurants around who make simple homestyle rotis for me to go and ask. I was terrified.

Suresh and Tim were super calm (or just too focused on the business plan to be as worried as me) and had faith that we would figure out a way.  Through the grapevine, I learned about a machine called the Hobart.  I checked it out in restaurant equipment shops and found that there were a few different sizes of them.  All of them were priced so high..it’s astounding!  It felt like going and buying a new car, except you are not allowed to try it out to see whether it would actually work to make the dough. And you are supposed to just guess the size you need, and just guess the number of customers you are going to serve.  You can see how all of this is really daunting and scary.  The machine itself is scary…it even has a cage as it could take your arm out if not used properly. 

Luckily, a kind restaurant owner of a place that we were considering buying had a hobart, and he let me use his to test if it would work to make my dough.  Bingo! It worked wonders.  That really was one of the happiest days of my life to know there was a solution to the problem, and we happily paid for a Hobart knowing it would work for us.  It’s a whole separate story about how it didn’t work with our electrical outlet, but we dealt with that. 

The tawa problem also weighed down on me.  I kept staring at restaurants to see what they used for cooking things that looked like rotis.  Pancake places, wraps places.  It seemed like a griddle would be the solution.  I needed to test one though to ease my fears, and to see if it would get hot enough.  I went to my local Gurdwara, where they make lots of rotis for the Sunday Service.  Sure enough, they had a griddle to make them on.  I volunteered and felt a little guilty as all the women in there thought I was this super religious girl taking hours out of her day to serve her community.  Really I was just researching and trying to get as much practice.  Oh well, killing two birds with one stone is okay I figured.

Now, 9 months later, it’s really cool to see the GREAT rotis that come out of Kasa.  To start, we had roti school where I taught the initial crew how to make rotis.  We threw a ton of labor into the rotis.  Eventually the best roti rollers rose to the top and then a transformation happened.  Our baby Kasa has a personality of its own after all aside from Tim, Suresh and I.  A new method evolved and was perfected by Craig.  We learned how to scale the process and make them at speed in large numbers with a third of the labor.  And best of all, they were even more delicious than before!  My eternal thanks go to Craig the Roti Maestro, who took that process two steps further and made the rotis even more delicious and manageable.   We transformed a centuries-old art form to a commercial restaurant level.

Lesson learned: when super afraid, remember you can’t do it all by yourself but you can start the process.  Research, great staff and luck are all equally important.  Hopefully they come your way once you start walking down the path.

Anamika