Oakland
Rich Roti
by | May 2, 2024 10:30 am
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Posted to: Food
Sarah Bass Photos
Can you feel the flake?
Aman Cafe
4021 Broadway Ave.
Oakland
Nestled unassumingly between other quietly popular restaurants on a wide stretch of Broadway at 40th is Aman Cafe, home to Malaysian roti that are ultra flaky and just-buttery-enough to satisfy any true carb lover.
In need of a comforting and vegetable-forward meal, my friend and I sat down to grub down, after ordering a beverage each, two kinds of roti, and a pea shoot salad
One Hundred Year Old Ginger Beer: not always better.
Meave’s ginger beer ($5) came in a sweet retro-style brown glass bottle, “botanically brewed” by Fentimans, a century-old British company with a dog as their logo. It was nearly clear, a pleasant surprise for a soda, nicely carbonated, and indeed quite botanical. It was also quite sweet and not at all spicy. I would call it a ginger soda over a beer, given it’s lack of bite, but a good choice for rich food.
I ordered a pineapple turmeric banana smoothie ($8), which arrived in a glass, thick and super smooth but light bodied, a nice pale sunshine yellow flecked with dark bits. The banana came in as a good base, providing really lush thickness and just the right level of sweet, with the pineapple’s acid and turmeric’s bite dulled but not entirely eclipsed. It felt like fruit, as it should.
Shortly thereafter our table was filled: a large flat bowl of vibrant green salad and two metal trays with a heap of roti piled next to a tin skillet of curried vegetables, a small glass bowl of coconut sauce, and two slices of orange, soccer-practice-snack style.
I began eating with reckless abandon, only to pause two bites in. The pea shoot salad, of which I ama loud proponent in general, was juicy and fresh and very, very salty, but this salt came at a cost to me: after allowing the flavors to sink in and bloom on my palate, I found that salt to be oceanic, and not in sea salt kinda way but with an anchovy or fish sauce punch.
I tried again, to make sure I wasn’t wrong or to see if I could ignore it, but no dice. The switch in my brain had flipped and that dressing was no longer for me. We had flip-flopped on salad choice between this and the tea leaf, a classic that also often contains sauced or powdered seafood, and so I am curious how that one would have played out.
Pea shoot salad
The roti, however, was excellent, just as flaky and stretchy and greasy and chewy as you could dream of, good in the hand and in the mouth.
Both of the dishes were good, with plenty of vegetable variety and lush coconut based sauces coating them and sliced green onion and a wedge of avocado on top. Their contents were different but fairly similar in taste; the trays could be differentiated by their plain or green-onion-flecked flatbreads. The comfort dish had tofu and a soy-based sauce while the root garden boasted pickled mango and a lighter sauce.
The slices of fresh avocado melted into the warm curries rather than standing out or adding any noticeable flavor or textural contrast, unseasoned and soft, a bit of a waste of their potential. The sauces themselves were richly flavored and spiced in a complex but gentle way, with no one thing standing out, simply melding together into a warming combination. I found the root garden’s fresher flavor to be more my speed, while Meave preferred the comfort’s weightier feel, which made splitting up leftovers an easy decision. And the portions, coupled with our need-to-each-small-meals-frequently digestive systems, left us with a nice little takeout container each at the end.
The coconut dipping sauce, with a bright orange dash of oil atop, was delicious; creamy but not too fatty, spiced by not spicy (could have been! Wouldn’t have hated that!), lightly sweet and nutty and fantastic with everything. It brightened up some otherwise heavy bites, a necessary and excellent companion.
Overall, a tasty meal but underwhelming, due to a couple of small gripes.
Aman’s website prominently describes it as an all-day cafe, but it is open for five hours in the middle of the day. The online menu prices are several dollars lower than what was charged in person. They are almost accurate on the menu Google provides, but on their website the difference was $3 – 4 for entrees, $1 for the salad, and the smoothie is not listed. The cafe was opened in 2021; these prices are already also several bucks higher than the $10 comfort roti they boasted in that year. I certainly understand how badly inflation and food and supply chain prices rising dramatically have hit folks, but wish they were able to update things accordingly to properly set expectations.
If the salad did not contain some sort of seafood, it did have some “unbelievably convincing” substitute (said my friend who does regularly consume fish sauce and the like). That was a shame, as the pea shoots themselves were lovely and fresh and earthy, and I would have liked to eat more than a couple bites before pushing aside from the overwhelming fish bomb flavor. My meal would also have greatly benefited from those brighter, uncooked bites for contrast. Veggies and roti are rich.
All small issues, as I said, but distracting enough from the experience for me to feel compelled to mention. Running a small business is no easy feat, and serving good food is and should be the foremost concern, but these details add up when so many are overlooked.
The restaurant was opened by Tiyo Shibabaw, who has run Teni East, an airy and approachable Burmese spot next door since 2016, where they also serve their roti. An alum of the Burma Superstar empire, Shibabaw infused what she learned there with her own knowledge and Ethiopian heritage and California flair, which is why it is perhaps my favorite of the Burmese offerings in town (and we have several!!). I have been delighted by all of the meals I’ve eaten there, finding the food and flavors fresh and no-nonsense, a lighter approach to the layered flavors of the cuisine. This is part of why I feel a bit let down by Aman. The roti themselves are fabulous, a perfect vehicle that can easily stand on their own as well, but their accompaniments really left me hanging.
Aman Cafe is open 10:30 – 3:30 six days a week (via Google and their instagram it appears to be Wednesday-Monday, the website lists Monday-Saturday).
