New restaurant offers a different approach with salads, bubble tea

GAYLORD — When Nahleayen Vang decided to open Mai Salads, she wanted to challenge the conventional wisdom of what ingredients are in a salad.

"When I cook, I mix and match sauces and vegetables trying to create new things. I plan on doing a lot of that with Mai Salads," said Vang.

Her restaurant in downtown Gaylord opened recently and is officially called Mai Salads Soup & Boba.

"I see how Gaylord is growing and changing. I have been up here in Northern Michigan for 24 years. When I arrived Gaylord was bigger than anything but it wasn't like this. I like the direction Gaylord is going — they are welcoming new things and ideas," she said.

A good example of her approach is the Thai Chicken Laab salad.

"Laab is a traditional Laotian and Thai dish that is typically ground beef or chicken that is a combination of spicy, sweet, sour and savory flavors. We have infused the traditional flavors of Laab to create our Thai Chicken Laab salad served with a lemon vinaigrette for a refreshing and lighter spin," Vang said.

Vang and her husband, Jackel, have owned and operated Mai Mai Asian Cuisine in Grayling since about 2020. That restaurant was previously known as China West, and was renamed when the Vangs took it over from her parents who retired.

"We renamed it Mai Mai after my mother whose name was Mai," Vang said.

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Besides salads, Mai Salads will offer a variety of soups, including vegetarian and gluten-free options. She wanted to create food that was convenient, fast and healthy.

"Those usually don't go together. So I wanted to create something that was delicious and accessible to everyone," said Vang.

In addition to unique salads and soups, Mai Salad will also feature boba, or bubble tea drinks. According to the Food Network, boba made its debut in the U.S. in the late 1990s when tea chains originally from Taiwan opened and started selling sugary brown chewy balls in sweet milk tea that caught on in Asian American communities.

Vang noted that bubble milk tea is traditionally made with black tea, which has a neutral taste profile.

"We make it out of black Assam tea like a classic, which is just black tea, milk and sugar syrup. Then you can add fruit options like honeydew, mango and strawberry from a powder," she said.

"All of our drinks come with the tapioca boba pearls, which are sweet and chewy translucent brown spheres made from tapioca starch, brown sugar and water. It takes about an hour to cook them and they have a chewy texture," Vang added. "For our fruit teas we use Jasmine tea (scented with the aroma of Jasmine blossoms)."

For now Mai Salads is open from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday. The restaurant is closed on Sunday.

"We are focused on lunch since that is when most people like to eat soup and salad. In the future we will make wraps and pasta salads that people will be able to purchase for takeout for dinner," said Vang.

— Contact Paul Welitzkin at pwelitzkin@gaylordheraldtimes.com .

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: New restaurant offers a different approach with salads, bubble tea