Kimberly Bolan and her brother, Kurt Kaiser, own Flipside Asia, a catering company that also sells Asian cuisine to the public.
And they have a mission.
“We’re educating people on what Thai curry should taste like,” says Bolan, 53. “A lot of people don’t know. They assume they hate it.”
“We get all our spices from Dubai and Southeast Asia,” says Kaiser, 43. “We do Indian food, but the focus is more on Thai curry. Just the spices they use. Thai curry is typically a paste. And you use the paste with coconut milk, lemongrass. Indian curry is more cumin, paprika, and chilis. It’s just completely different.”
Bolan and Kaiser, who cook out of the Memphis Kitchen Co-op Marketplace in Cordova, offer 20 dishes via @flipsideasia on Instagram and Facebook.
They do a lot of private parties. “The spring roll class I’ve been doing for girls nights and birthday parties is really fun,” Bolan says. “We show you how to make a Vietnamese fresh spring roll.”
Usually, what they cook during the week, they’ll sell to the public at the co-op at 7942 Fischer Steel Road.
They also sell at Curb Market, Grind City Grocer, and Cordelia’s Market. “Right now we’re just introducing our Thai vegetable curries with jasmine rice. If people like those flavors, they’ll love the others.”
Their food items, cooked fresh every week, include their popular laab namtok, or “lettuce wraps.” Kaiser described it as “a spicy minced pork with fresh herbs.”
They also make an Indian butter chicken, which is popular. “I’ve been making it over 20 years,” Bolan says. “It’s a tomato-based Indian dish served over basmati rice. It is so good.”
“Butter chicken is probably the most ubiquitous Indian dish around the world,” Kaiser says. “One of the things that separates ours is the spice we get directly from the Dubai market.”
They have a travel connection that brings back spices from Dubai, Bolan says.
A native Memphian, Bolan began cooking exotic dishes when she started traveling around the world after high school.
Seeing the different dishes in Peru and the Maldives, where she lived, made her want to learn. “It was fascinating to me that the food was such a huge part of their culture.
“That’s what, I think, spurred me into this whole thing. I’ve always loved to cook for people. And I didn’t want to live the rest of my life not having this food in my life.”
Most of her recipes are family recipes she got from friends living around the world.
Kaiser, who got his master’s in biology, spent about eight months with Bolan in the Philippines after graduation. “We started messing around in the kitchen in the Philippines,” he says. “We always kind of cooked a little bit together.”
He began cooking on his own after he moved to Vietnam in 2018 to open tap rooms for a brewery. But that job ended when the pandemic hit. He moved back to Memphis.
Kaiser recalls the origin of Flipside Asia: “I remember saying, ‘Your recipes are badass and I can’t find that flavor.’”
“Here we are,” Bolan says. “Two white kids from Memphis. And we’re not Asian, clearly. And we’re not really chefs.”
But, she says, “You have these recipes that have been handed to you from generations of people. And you’re interested in this and you want people to taste it. You want them to open their minds.”
Kaiser made a list of what they were making and he began delivering the dishes to a couple of neighborhoods.
“All our curries are notoriously mild,” Kaiser says.
“We want it to be authentic without blowing somebody’s brains out,” Bolan adds. “The general public doesn’t want it spicy in this part of the world. We want you to enjoy it. Like any food, you should taste it first and then decide if you want to add spice.”
They might open a food truck or a restaurant one day, but, Bolan says, “I’m riding this wave of happiness right now. I don’t want to mess anything up. And we’re having fun. If you can’t have fun, don’t do it.”