Mia - Ithaca, NY

My parents have mentioned their excellent meals at Mia periodically over the past couple years, and I finally got a chance to go with them for dinner recently.  It's a tapas bar, but the small plates are inspired by a variety of asian countries, instead of traditional spanish tapas.  We ended up with a party of 8 for dinner, and this worked very well.  The menu is extensive and it would be hard to sample very many items if you're a small group.  For our dinner, everyone selected 2 dishes and then we shared them around the table.  

It all started out very well with this invitingly massive Pimm's Cup.

I'd never heard of Nuta before, but the internet tells me it is a miso and vinegar based dressing. This dish called Nuta had hamachi, ahi, salmon, avocado and a miso dressing.  It seemed very much like a poke to me, and was light and flavorful in every way that raw fish should be.

The dal with spinach didn't look like much, but it was very flavorful.  I was having a hard time pinning down what spices might be in it.  The naan went very well with it.

These BBQ pork buns were a hit, we ended up ordering a second round.  A nice combination of pork belly, sauce, and pickles on a soft bun.  The sauteed asian greens were also a star of the night.

I love sticky rice, so I was drawn to the Thai sun-dried beef with sticky rice.  The beef was coated in a tamarind-chili sauce.

The sweet potato fries were crispy, but a bit unevenly seasoned and would have benefited from a dipping sauce.

The meatballs in green curry were just fine, relatively tender with a flavorful green curry sauce. The wakame seaweed salad was light and crunchy and was a pretty standard seaweed salad.

The chicken tikka mahkani was pretty good, but not as flavorful as the dahl.  The chicken was very tender, but I thought the sauce was a bit too tomatoey for me and not quite creamy enough.

And we were all stuffed to the brim after the meal, so no room for dessert and time to go home and digest.