We started TSAI a few years ago talking about how we were inspired by the food and eating habits of the Taiwanese. This is what we were talking about. Park your scooter. Pull up a stool. Order some stinky tofu with a side of pickled cabbage or a quick bowl of noodles. Or maybe grab a few tea eggs, plucked from a bubbling cauldron and dropped into a plastic bag for you to carry away.
A few pictures from our last house event, courtesy of Ashley Braquet. More here. 
Our last TSAI House event will be taking place later this month, on the evening of Friday, 6/21. We’ll be serving simple fare. Rice bowls, home-made sauces, and fresh vegetables. Live music and refreshing beverages too. Please check back in this week and next week for the menu, event details, and to RSVP.
As many of you have noted, we’ve been quieter than usual over the course of this year, hosting events with lesser frequency than we have in the past. It’s been a pleasure sharing our cooking with you all at our house events and at the OCH Art Market. But as we arrive at the two year anniversary of TSAI starting out at the Dragon’s Den in 2011, we’re transitioning out of doing business as a pop-up restaurant, so that we can take the time to evaluate where we are today, build upon what we’ve learned, and take a look at opportunities for a brick-and-mortar operation that allows us to retain TSAI’s best qualities, while providing better food, better service, more efficient operations, a chance to be part of a neighborhood, and the ability to bring into play some of our other interests. These include books, music, and art, and a fascination with how those pursuits relate to the changing role of restaurants, coffee shops, pop-ups, libraries, and bookstores as places where people can gather in public and semi-public realms in to dine with friends, to people watch or to meet new people, to buy a newspaper and to read for a morning, to browse magazines or to use free Wi-Fi, to study or to do work, to attend a reading, or take in a concert.
Finding out what this means for us may take a few months. It may take a few years. In that time, you may forget who we are, but you’ll at least have learned a word in Chinese. We’ll continue to post recipes on this website, and to share our approach to cooking and dining with you all. We’ll also be doing a little bit of catering, and have ideas for very small events we’d like to host here and there.
If you’re on our email list, we’ll be in touch about these events and with the new recipes, and possibly to run ideas by you as we work towards the next phase for TSAI.
If you’re not on our email list and would like to be, just let us know at tsainola@gmail.com.
David Thier covers our little operation in an article on speakeasies and pop-ups for the December/January issue of Garden & Gun. We’re proud to share the page with the guys from Pizza Delicious, and a very large owl. 
Next Saturday, 10/10, we’ll be serving food at the OCH Art Market from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Faubourg Lafayette Historic Home Tour takes place at the same time, along with the O. C. Haley Boulevard Main Street Festival. All three events are free and open to the public.
The following weekend, we’re be in Mid-City on Saturday evening, 11/17, for our autumn TSAI House event. We’re excited about returning to this wonderful home and garden, and the menu that we’re putting together.
Check back in soon for details.
Susan Langenhennig has written an article on pop-up restaurants for the Times Picayune, and includes TSAI as a one “to keep on your radar.” We hope to try out all of the other delicious options she mentions ourselves.
Our good friend Kendall Calyen took wonderful pictures of last Sunday’s TSAI House event with Leyla McCalla. Take a look on our Facebook page. Many thanks to all of our guests, Leyla, and friends for a beautiful evening.
We have pictures from our TSAI House event last Sunday in the Marigny here. We also recently agreed to be the primary food vendor at the OCH Art Market on the second Saturday of every month from now through the end of 2012, so please visit us there starting this Saturday to eat our food, refresh yourself with our delicious beverages, and to see the improvements being made to both the space we’re working out of as well as to OC Haley Boulevard as a whole. The corridor has come a long way in just the last couple of years, and we’re excited to be a part of it.
We’ll be at the OCH Art Market this Saturday from 10-3, serving up Swiss Chard Pancakes with a Cool Yogurt Sauce (Gluten-free), Black-eyed Pea Mushroom Gumbo with Hot Pepper Relish and Louisiana-grown Rice, and Fruit-infused Iced Tea.
tsainola 