Burma Superstar - San Francisco

From what we read on Yelp.com, this place is da bomb. It was notorious that patrons had to wait for up to one hour just to get a seat in the restaurant. To make it worse, they don't take reservations.

We left early around 10 to catch the early brunch. Reached there around 11:45 and it was half full already. Some people seemed to be there since 11 ! Wow..is it that good ?

Based on the reviews, we have determined what to order. Their specialty seemed to be Tea leaf salad and Samusa Soup. I like calamari so I chose Wok roasted calamari and threw in garlic noodle just to see whether it's similar to the one from Thanh Long. I thought heck..we'll be there most likely only this time, so might as well try a few things all at once.

Tea leaf salad was a combination of chopped tomato, lettuce, different kind of nuts (pine ?, soy bean ?, peanuts, and broad bean ?), tea leaf, lemon grass and squeeze of lemon juice. The nuts gave crunchiness and lemon made it so refreshing. They could have used younger lemon grass because the one they used was a bit tough so we ended up picking them out.


The calamari was totally different from what we expected. It didn't have the look or even taste of any roast or smoky flavor. It look more like blanched. Though the calamari was very tender but the whole dish was more like a salad than appetizer. I guess I expected more calamari instead of a bunch of lettuce/cucumber.


The samusa soup was actually vegetarian. But for a vegetarian soup it totally exceeded expectation. This soup was supposedly featured on Food Network and Bay Area Backroads. We did notice that this soup along with the tea leaf salad were ordered on quite a few tables beside ours. The soup didn't present itself that well but once we had a sip, it totally changed our opinion. The potato fritters in the soup and lentils did fill us up. We actually had two bowls of the soup because the order I think should be enough to serve four people.


Our last order was garlic noodle. Which was perfect considering by then we totally needed some carb and protein. The first few dishes were pretty light and were almost like teasers. The garlic noodle though wasn't as rich as the Thanh Long version was actually tasty and not as garlicky as I expected. So don't let the 'garlic' drives you away from trying this tasty noodle.

Oops almost forgot about our drink. We tried Burma cooler which was a blend of beer, ginger and lemon. It was light especially after mixed with ice. For the price I think it deserves more alcohol.

Total we spent about $48.50 before tips.

309 Clement St (between 4th Ave & 5th Ave) San Francisco, CA 94118

Comments