Taste Memories | Listen

How capturing elusive bites from the past can move a menu forward

On my own culinary journey, I’ve been privileged to have so many wonderful meals, many prepared expertly by my counterparts. Beautiful meals burn themselves into my mind, everytexture and every taste becoming a memory that I continually seek out for better and better dishes. I often get a little mad when I have a great bite, because I want it available to me all the time.

I often describe Sri Lankan cuisine as the quest for the perfect bite—rice, curries, sambols (condiments), and salads meld together for a full flavor journey at your fingertips. For Tuk Tuk Snack Shop, I wanted to be a curator, an auteur of flavors unfamiliar to my hometown and its residents. When it came to menu development with my team, I wanted the dishes to be representative of my favorite memories, the ones that are cornerstones of my journey.

One of the recipes I was most eager to re-create was incredibly simple: a cheese toast with chiles and just enough zing to make me come back for more. A spicy grilled cheese isn’t enough, though; it needs a kicker—especially since every other one in town is covered in an amalgamation of toppings. Bacon, mushrooms, potato chips, pulled pork—the ideas were plentiful, but none of them were representative of something I’d like to keep coming back for.

Enter: the sambol.

Sambols are one of the hallmarks of Sri Lankan cuisine—they are an accompaniment to any and every meal. Nearly every dish at the Snack Shop has a sambol as a component. They supply sweet, spicy, savory, and sour on demand, adjustable to personal preference. The Tuk Tuk kitchen always has at least three sambols available—and for a grown-up yet Sri Lankan grilled cheese sandwich, I opted for a crowd favorite, seeni sambol. 

Seeni sambol marries slow cooked, caramelized onion with a hint of chiles and a strong note of tamarind, a sweet and tangy fruit. I’d occasionally added it to cheese and crackers, so it seemed like a natural match for a grilled cheese sandwich studded with onion and Serrano
pepper. Thus, the Duke was born. 

Of course, not every recipe at the Snack Shop calls back to a specific taste memory—we are creating new taste memories as well. The Baron, our take on the classic corn dog, combines Sri Lankan street food with an American staple. This menu item was borne of collaboration and
refinement by the culinary team. 

The first iteration of our “fritterdog” was wrapped in our vadai (lentil fritter) dough. While delicious, the final result wasn’t quite right. It didn’t capture the inherent fun and simplicity of a corn dog, and unlike our more streamlined menu items, it was labor intensive and
just a bit clunky. 

Instead of the stiff fritter dough exterior, our culinary manager, Emie Dunagan, developed a lentil flour-based batter that puffed perfectly into a familiar corn dog profile. The batter incorporates some of the hallmarks of traditional vadai, with spices punctuating the
resulting fluffy lentil exterior. 

But with a restaurant, you don’t always want to offer the expected. A plain-looking fritterdog was not enough of a “wow” factor for Team Tuk, so we decided to add a little more action to the party. After the Baron is fried, it gets a light coating of sweet chili sauce and a coating of puffed crunchy peas and lentils, adding a whole new textural experience to our corndog competitor while making it totally Instagram worthy. 

Developing the menu at the Snack Shop has been a continually evolving journey, but one that I’m enjoying immensely. As we continue to expand and refine our offerings, I’m finding that it doesn’t just take memory but strong collaboration to build a menu that is both successful
and representative of what I want to offer. The experimentation is the best, and usually the most delicious, part, while the final products are a source of pride for my team. 

Onward.

Keep Reading

Dining Out

7 Noteworthy Mississippi Restaurants | Listen

Whether you’re in the mood for handcrafted pizza or Southern brunch, Mississippi has you covered with their diverse range of restaurants.

From the Magazine

Will Travel for Southern Food | Listen

When in search of Cajun jambalaya or black-eyed peas, these chefs have got a taste of Southern food waiting for you.

From the Magazine

Why We’re Eating from Root to Plate

Our editor’s letter in the Fall 2022 issue of the Local Palate looks ahead to dishes that capture fall, new cookbooks, and chef features.