Burma Superstar

The title of this post says it all: the food was Burmese, and it was super! It also happens to be a very popular restaurant in San Francisco. How popular? Popular enough to lead to a TWO-hour wait for a table for two people. On the bright side, the restaurant has complementary tea for those cold San Francisco night. If you want something even warmer, there's a coffeeshop called Blue Danube right across from the restaurant. The coffeeshop is quaint and cute, and provides a nice waiting spot.

If you survive the wait and eventually make it inside, everything will be worth it. The menu offers one enticing dish after the other. There were probably 10 different things I wanted to try. I eventually decided on the Rainbow Salad and the Traditional Burmese Noodles that the restaurant is famous for. The salad contained 22 different ingredients, including 4 types of noodles, green papaya, onions, peanuts, and many others. Despite the presence of the noodles, the Rainbow Salad reminded me of the Green Papaya Salad often seen in Vietnamese restaurants; they both had similar texture and lightness. I think the dressing is the same for both salads. I'm a huge fan of the Green Papaya Salad, so I loved the Rainbow Salad as well. One distinctive feature of the Rainbow Salad is that it's served with all ingredients separated, and they're mixed at the table. I'm sure this contributes to the freshness of the salad because the ingredients don't have any time to soak up and get heavy with oil.

My favorite part of the dinner, though, were the Burmese noodles. They were served cold, almost pasta salad-style. Consistent with the temperature difference, the noodles tasted like no other Asian noodles I have ever tried. They were light and refreshing instead of heavy and oily like things similar to Pad Thai, etc. Instead of smothered in oil, the noodles came with a salad dressing-like sauce with citrus flavors in it. If I didn't know it was served as a main dish, I would have called it a salad. Whatever it is, it is both the best noodle and best salad I have ever had. And yes, I like it more than the Green Papaya salad! Plus, it's filling enough for a main course :)

Princess Jasmine, who came with me to Burma Superstar, ordered vegetarian samusas and two types of noodle dishes. They were good, but nothing too extraordinary. I definitely made the better choices that night :)