Burmese food?

Has anyone else tried Burmese food? Pete and I ate at a Burmese restaurant in Sydney yesterday - this was one of the dishes. It's a wonderful salad known as laphet thote - made of fermented or pickled tea leaves, with fried garlic, beans and sesame seeds for crunch. I'd love any reccos anyone has on other dishes to look out for. We had a sour leaf salad, which google says is made from rosella leaves. From our experience the curries have been quite ordinary, but the salads are really unusual.

[Jenise]

I have never eaten Burmese food nor do I know where I could find it. I certainly haven't passed up any opportunities to eat Burmese food, I can tell you that. A restaurant I used to love in Seattle, however, used to do Dungeness crab stir fried in what they called a Burmese curry sauce. I don't know how authentic it was, but it was my favorite dish at that restaurant one I'd call ahead to make sure they were doing it and I'd pre-order a Gunderloch spatlese to go with it. (I was flying in from Alaska on those occasions, hence the need to pre-arrange certain things.) It that was any indication, the flavors of Burmese food could be called 'intense'.

The salad you show here looks fantastic.

Jenise, next time you go to San Francisco, go over to Clement and check out the Burma Superstar.

It's a San Francisco tradition----but they got featured on Food Channel and some other tv shows, so the secret is out. It's a small and crowded place, very casual, limited wines...but the food is nothing short of incredible!

When it's crowded, which is most of the time, you pencil your name in on a clipboard for a table and hang around 'til one becomes available---or leave your cellphone and go across the street to a coffee shop, or to the bookstore, or the chines shops that line the street, until you get the call.

The green papaya and mango and curries abound, but Burmese is an interesting melange of Indian, Thai/Cambodian, mixed Chinese, and the local island and maritime cultures.

It tends to be not as scorching hot (although it can be that) on average, as Thai or some Indian, and the curries are deliciously different, with more tropical influences, and much more use of fruit. And lots of potatoes.

My favorite dish is their Preserved Fermented Green Tea salad, a marvelous combination that arrives on a huge platter, each ingredient individually arranged, narrated, then arranged into a salad and served. It is one of the knockout dishes I've had in San Francisco...a city not short of knockouts.

Right in the middle of that great stretch of Clement, Dave. With Clementine's (now owned/operated by Chapeau owner) on one end, and a delightful, simple, and amazingly cheap Vietnamese place just a block or so away...and not to mention the array of truly interesting stores, including many Chinese places and indie art stores and used bookstores and such.

Last time I was there, I heard that the Star had opened a new place, and that it was pretty popular,but never had an opportunity to check it out.

When you go back, you should try the Star. Order the Fermented Tea salad and probably their signature Potato curry. They usually have a small but decent selection of wines that go well with the food too.

Yep, that's the salad in the photo, Hoke. Laphet Thote - pickled or fermented tea leaf salad.

Thought it looked familiar, celia!

Have you had the Burmese-styled potato and pumpkin curry as well?

And although I didn't have it, my wife once had a Vietnamese-ish styled caramelized clay pot chicken at the Burma Superstar that looked marvelous.

Hoke, the place we go to doesn't seem to do curries particularly well - just had a look at their menu and they don't actually have any vegetarian curries. But the salads are amazing and the flavours, as Jenise says, are just so interesting. They do a Pennywort salad and a Green Mango salad, both of which are on the menu to try next time we go!

Oooh. Oooh. Green mango salad. Had a version of that here. Good stuff.

Not had pennywort that I know of...

Pennywort (Gotu Kola) is sometimes sold in nurseries as the "arthritis herb". Supposed to be good for ameliorating the aches and pains for arthritis sufferers.

Thanks for thread. I've eaten at one Burmese restauant (Mingala in NYC) a couple of times, quite enjoyed. Mostly reminds me of Thai, though there were dishes that reminded me more of Indian or Chinese cuisine/