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.

Havana, Park St., Alameda, CA
(A quick, preliminary review.)

Cuban sandwich with boniato fries and garlic
Iced tea

I haven’t been having good luck with sandwiches recently. I thought this restaurant might change my luck, but I was mistaken. Never having lived in Cuba or on the eastern seaboard, I don’t fancy myself an expert on Cuban sandwiches, by any means. But is it that much of a stretch to except the flavor of a sandwich to reflect the vibrancy of its culture?

The restaurant had a pleasantly airy, open feel to it, its walls adorned with massive and impressive photographs that do nothing to quell my fascination with seeing Cuba in person. Vaguely Latin music emanated from the ceiling at the appropriate volume, varying in its appeal from enjoyable to appalling.

(An aside. Dear Bay Area Restaurants: Please remove Manu Chao and his keychain-explosion sound effects permanently from all musical rotation. It got old half a decade ago. Please and thank you.)

Service was absentminded and aloof, but I’m willing to be lenient since it is a new(ish) restaurant and these things tend to work themselves out. I consoled myself with bread reminiscent of dry ciabatta, strangely sliced double-wide. Regardless of grill time, my sandwich took far too long to arrive. When it did, it was accompanied by boniato fries instead of the plantains I’d ordered, but I was too impatient to argue. Plus, who can argue with sweet potato fries (even if their accompanying “guava chipotle sauce” tasted like nothing more than overly-sweet barbecue sauce)?

Anyway, onto the sandwich, itself. Pork should not be bland. Roast pork and ham, doubly so. The anemic pickle did nothing to distinguish itself from its relatives condemned to McDonald’s. The bread was quite good, simultaneously soft and toasty, but did nothing to pull the disparately textured yet indistinctly flavored elements of the sandwich together. The damned thing needed a healthy dose of mustard. But it was entirely edible, an inoffensive facsimile of its lofty prototypical ideal located somewhere in Miami.

$15 is a bit too much for a sandwich lunch, even if it’s purportedly Cuban. I may stop by for small plates and drinks sometime to give it another chance, but I’m not much of a mojito aficionado.

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I will get to the taco crawl eventually. I promise.