Restaurant Review: Mama of Asian food adds exciting flavours

At a time when the cuisine was limited to fine dining restaurants in five-star properties, Mamagoto, that literally translates to ‘playing with food’ in Japanese, made Asian eating fun, unpretentious and casual, perhaps, the biggest reason for its success. 

And the never-ending queue outside the restaurant’s Phoenix MarketCity outlet, where we dropped by on a Thursday evening, was testimony to just that. For foodies, it was reason to cheer as the restaurant had recently launched a new menu that has been curated specially for those who love fresh and invigorating flavours with spicy twists. 

We were treated to a few of them and the new additions clearly left us asking for more. We started our meal with the Bophut village hot chicken wings. These Thai-spiced wings, with a hint of coconut, were a delight. And trust me, when I say hot, I’m not kidding. It is the kind that will have you reaching out for your drink, or a glass of water, after the first bite. 

But as you take the second, third and so on, the nutty sweetness of sesame and coconut will start complimenting the heat from the spices and have you licking it off your fingers. This is a must try for those who love an extra dose of spice. 

Next in line was crystal dumplings — translucent parcels filled with water chestnut, shitake, lotus root and carrot. It seemed a little bland after the wings. We followed it with prawn three pepper bomb. The mildly sweet taste of the prawn went well with the unique flavour of Chinese wine and sesame oil. 

While we thought, we’d go for the a la carte options for the main course, the hosts suggested that we try one of their newly launched bento boxes that bring flavours from Japan, China, Indonesia and Malaysia, all in a single plate. 

For the uninitiated, a bento is a single-portion takeout or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine. A traditional bento holds rice, fish or meat, with pickled or cooked vegetables, usually in a box-shaped container. The restaurant offers five options of non-veg and veg boxes each, that change every day. My bento box had crispy lotus stem that had a lovely flavour. 

Crunchy and subtle, and with a dash of burnt garlic, it tasted a bit like artichoke hearts. It also included som tam (papaya salad). It’s at once addictively hot, refreshingly crunchy, intensely savoury and sour – in short, the flavours of south-east Asia on a plate. 

No wonder it was the only salad to make it to the (extremely subjective) list of the world’s 50 most delicious foods in 2016. 

The other components in the box included gyoza, straight up beans, chicken in schezwan sauce and the insanely spicy chilli padi. No complaints about any. 

We finished the meal with coconut panko banana. The crispy banana fritters coated with panko (breadcrumbs with a light, flaky texture) served with coconut ice cream was just heavenly and the perfect finish.