For former IAS officer Ali Asgar Pasha, who retired as secretary of the Kerala government’s Food and Civil Supplies department in 2023, each day starts at around 7 am at the busy wholesale vegetable market in Kochi’s Nettoor area. After selecting the freshest produce, he heads to the Kalamukku fishing harbour in Vypeen to buy fresh fish.
The Birth of ‘Mee Mee’
All this effort is for his restaurant, named ‘Mee Mee’, which serves authentic Kerala-style lunch seven days a week. In just four months, it has become a regular haunt for many. Unlike many retired IAS and IPS officers who seek post-retirement work within the government, Pasha, a 2004-batch officer, decided to pursue his culinary passion. He not only runs Mee Mee but also does much of the cooking, preparing meat and fish curries for his regular customers.
“Cooking has been my passion during my civil service days. While in service, I used to cook food at home and serve it to my colleagues. All of them, including seniors, appreciated my culinary skills,” Pasha said.
A New Chapter
Opening an eatery was a natural progression for him. “Before retiring in July 2023 as the Kerala government’s Secretary of Food and Civil Supplies, I had decided to launch a restaurant. My intention is not to make a profit; I want to provide quality food to people at a reasonable price,” Pasha explained.
Starting Mee Mee involved taking a house on a long lease and renovating it into a restaurant with an open kitchen. While many new eateries offer exotic delicacies, Pasha’s venture focuses on a traditional Kerala menu. “No colors are added to the food, and there is no adulteration of any sort. Most of the vegetables are sourced from farmers, but we also depend on the market for some items. The fish comes from the Chinese fishing nets near Kochi, and everything is cooked in coconut oil from Alappuzha’s Onattukara Coconut Producer Company,” he said. His employees are all locals.
Community and Quality
The restaurant, serving only lunch, opens at 12.30 pm and closes at 3 pm. A couple of months after starting Mee Mee, Pasha got a working partner in Sasha Bensy, retired HR head of Southeast Asia for the Heineken beer company. “One day, she came as a customer to the lunch house. Now, she also cooks an item,” Pasha said of Bensy, who lives nearby.
“Mee mee” is a term used by children in Kerala to refer to fish (meen, in Malayalam). “In the past, I used to take fresh fish packed from Kerala to Bengaluru where my brother-in-law’s family lived. As it became a regular affair, the children there started addressing me as Mee Mee Ikka (Ikka is a term used by Malayali Muslims to address elders). Hence, I named the lunch house Mee Mee,” Pasha said.
A Story of Determination
Pasha’s journey to success was not always smooth. Having scored just enough to pass his BA in History, he could not get admission as a regular student for his MA. With hard work and determination, he turned things around, earning first rank in MA History from the University of Calicut.
Pasha began his professional career as a transmission executive at All India Radio in 1989. He was selected as deputy collector in 1993, and in 2004, he was promoted to IAS officer, holding several posts including district collector.