Restaurant Roundup | Burma Superstar

From top to bottom: rainbow salad, pumpkin stew pork, deep fried coconut fritters with coconut ice cream.

Last Sunday, after the movie, Ken and I headed over to one of our favorite Inner Richmond restaurants, Burmese Superstar, for an early dinner. Like I have said before, you will have to allow extra time to park the car and promptly wait at the door before it opens for dinner at 5 pm. Seats fill up quickly that you’ll have to wait at least 45 minutes to 1 hour for the next round.

It was only 4:10 PM when we parked the car on Clement. We had plenty of time to walk around the neighborhood with the highest concentration of Asian shops other than Chinatown. In tacit agreement of mind we headed to Green Apple Books where he found some opera CDs and I scoured the fiction/literature section for books pertinent to the current reading challenges. At a quarter till we walked back to Burmese Superstar and occupied the first position in line.

We keep coming back for the signature rainbow salad, which features 22 ingredients, including four kinds of noodles, crispy fried garlic, diced potatoes, tofu, dried shrimp, fried onions, green papaya, roasted chilies, crushed yellow beans, cilantro, won ton chips, cabbage and a tamarind dressing. The server will explain these ingredients before mixing them up in front of you. This serving of the savory salad definitely satisfy our cravings.

The pumpkin pork is simmered to a stew. Pork is marinated by ginger and tamarind with a tinge of chilies, cooked until tendered and added to the pumpkin stew. The dish we had last week was cooked in a haste as the pork, although very tender, did not absorb the taste of the pumpkin stew. That was a bit of a let-down from previous dining experiences. The okra and egg curry redeemed the prok, with plenty of okra and the Bumrese style curry was very tasty with chili and spices.

Along with the main dishes we had half serving of coconut rice and half serving of brown rice.

Desert was deep fried coconut fritters (shaped like fried banana) with coconut ice cream. It was a real treat with genuine shredded coconut wrapped around a thin batter.

While the overall dining experience has lived up to the past standard, I do notice that with the raise in price (most of the main dishes are up $1 each, entrees $8.75-$12.75), they have skimped out the portions in all dishes. Service is quick and friendly, but can be pushy.