W H AT WE’RE EATING
PHOTO BY HANNAH LEE
NEWS FROM OUR RESTAURANT COMMUNITY, PLUS A DISH WE LOVE
RASA INDI-CHINESE RESTAURANT 1826 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Chapel Hill; 919-929-2199; rasachapelhill.com
18
chapelhillmagazine.com
May/June 2021
T
he rainbow of colors delicately plated in each separate compartment have become ubiquitous at Rasa Indi-Chinese Restaurant. But this plate – and many others – are more than an emblem of Asian American food. They are symbols of struggle, entrepreneurship and the will to make it in a country far from home. Owners Richard Lee and Laxmi Tiwari Lee hail from India – he from Kolkata (home to the country’s only Chinese settlement) and she from Delhi. They moved to Chapel Hill in 2008 after short stints in Miami and Durham. As first-generation immigrants, they worked in restaurants as a way to provide for their now 8-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter in a country where the job industry felt almost impossible to crack without an extensive education. “After coming to this country in my early 20s,” Laxmi says, “I wanted to pursue [a career in] pharmacy, but [my degree] was not valid; I’d have to redo it. That threw me off a cliff. I’m like, ‘After four years of studying so hard?’ But [we] have always been foodie people. Richard has been cooking his whole life, since a really young age.” Before they opened Rasa in September 2013, Richard worked his way up in the local restaurant industry, from the now-shuttered Pao Lim Asian Bistro & Bar in Durham to Hunam Chinese