When I saw that there was a Burmese lunch popup I was very interested. Let's face it, in Houston, there's a decent population of Burmese in town, yet there's not a Burmese restaurant. Not to mention it's hosted by Master Chef, Ledgens Runner Up Chef Suu, I have to try it out of curiosity.
The menu is a la carte, and does a good job to curate what is good and cross section feature of the culture.
First up, which we all loved, was the Duck Puff. It's duck pate' with caramelized onion, as filling and puffy pastry on top, accompanied by Mango Sriracha. I'm not going to lie, the sauce really made the pastry and filling come together. Is the duck filling good by itself, yes, but the sauce definitely elevated it. If they sell it in store, I'll buy 10.
Then this is the Lemongrass Fish Noodles dish, the base is a catfish broth, in it is vermicelli, fish and shrimp cake, and pea fritter. I've never had pea fritters before, but it's crunchy and give it more texture that you don't usually get in vermicelli dishes. Definitely unique, do worthy of a note that this is a spicy dish.
This is their Tea Leaf Salad. To be honest, I didn't know what to expect since I don't have any experience in Burmese food, but this is very interesting. There's a line of cherry tomato, a line of cabbage topped with fermented Tea leaves, I kinda hope we could've tried what it brewed. Then it has a line of nuts, garlic chips, and sesame. So by the time you mix it all up, it's nice and crunchy every bite. The tomato gave it the juice, and the tea leaves gave it the savory. Pretty interesting in terms of the texture side.
Sorry didn't turn this photo around... but this is Rice and Curry. This is butter rice, also my first time trying it. It's actually crushed rice, with braised beef, which is fall-off-the-bone nice, with chopped veggie and shrimp paste. Maybe by this point we were pretty food, of course our eyes were bigger than our stomach, but flavor-wise, I was surprised that little braised jus made the whole dish. Not too spicy, but definitely been marinated for a bit. You get peas in the rice, and veggies for the texture. I'd be happy to have this again.
For dessert, they have coconut pudding.
It's mango puree, with passionfruit flavor folded in, with some berries and young coconut slices. To experience this you really need to mix the puree with the pudding to get the passionfruit flavor. It's almost too faint. The texture and combo is right.
Overall, I was surprised how good the combinations were. Then again, I really shouldn't be, since I've had Thai, Vietnamese and Indian food before, but the flavor is just different enough to be unique. It was definitely a neat experience. Hope they do more popups in the near future.
To follow Chef Suu Shin:
No comments:
Post a Comment