Bagan, Park St., Alameda, CA.
Nan Gyi Dok (Burmese rice noodles with a mild chicken coconut curry sauce, eggs, split yellow pea, and fried onion)
Thai Iced Tea
Forgive me for being blunt, but I am immediately suspicious of any Asian restaurant with scores of non-Asian people queuing up to gush over it (ahem, Le Cheval). While I’ve tried it and liked it, Burma Superstar is no exception. Apparently, my local Burmese restaurant (r.i.p., Hinn Tha) has changed into the East Bay branch of the ’star, so I gave it a try.
Wary of the Thep Phanom-enon — where they oversalt everything in an otherwise finely nuanced cuisine and somehow garner undying praise from the American palate — I ordered Nan Gyi Dok. Given my current dissatisfaction with curries (thanks to the plethora of mediocre Thai and now even Indian restaurants in the area), I was pleasantly surprised. Overly salty or not, the fragrant curry was some of the best I’ve ever had, a complex melange of spices tempered by a perfect coconut milk overtone. I’m glad to know that someone realizes this: mild does not equal bland. Alongside the rice noodles, which were like a lighter, more slippery spaghetti, the accoutrements made each bite a novelty, complimented by the piquant sweetness of slivered raw onion, the savory sweetness of fried onion, or pungent cilantro, the crunch of those fried-wonton-skin-like strips satisfying against the creaminess of sliced hardboiled egg. The chicken is kind of an afterthought, compulsory protein used as an excuse to assemble the rest of the ingredients.
I miss Hinn Tha’s Burmese iced tea. If you’ll excuse the perfume analogies (I’ve been reading about them too much recently), Thai iced tea is far too sweet, floral, and feminine, while Burmese iced tea is robust, rich, and masculine. I prefer the latter.
A rather hefty $15 out of my pocket for lunch, and copious amounts of water drunk to ward off my impending hypertension, though it was nice to sit and stare out at the rain.
