Ok. Everyone has already said everything there is to say about Burma Superstar. The blogosphere is chock-full of immense praise and a billion photos and detailed descriptions of everything about BS. Although people probably don’t commonly call it BS. Regardless, I’ll keep this short.
Burma Superstar is a Burmese restaurant in the Richmond. They do not take reservations. The decor is not particularly intriguing. But somehow it’s still posh as shit.
Tea Leaf Salad up close and personal
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Not like that mean doctor guy on TV, but like the teeny tiny little restaurant in Big-Plate-Italian*-dominated North Beach, San Francisco. The House. Grant Avenue just off Columbus. The location is unsuspecting. The website is underwhelming. The food is amazing.
Tuna rolly things. They don’t have a menu on their website, so you’re getting my best recollection of the dish names and components. Good luck!
I went for one of my four (yes, four) birthday meals this year. I went on my actual birthday. This was The Choice. It’s difficult to choose a birthday restaurant, let me tell you. “Angie, you know all the restaurants in SF, why don’t you pick?” Wait, what? Is there a sit-down Quizno’s in midtown**? No, seriously, I don’t know all the restaurants. I was looking on the SF Gate’s top 100 list and hadn’t even heard of most of the places. It’s sad, I know. And it’s exacerbated by the fact that I have a horrible memory. What I’m saying is, come birthday time, I’m on Yelp and OpenTable like every other idiot.
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Do you remember the Genghis Khan Kitchen in Castro Valley? Just near the corner of Redwood Road and CVB in the Lucky’s (then Albertson’s, then Lucky’s again) shopping center? Yeah, I do too. I had a bad feeling about that place for some reason, though I never went. Three years ago the owners of Genghis apparently decided they needed a change. Enter Genghix, the bad-ass older brother of Genghis*.
Genghix has a newly decorated interior and some rad, solid wood front doors that make it look sort of like a dungeon. But it’s not; it’s awesome. The interior has that sort of mood lighting that goes with polished concrete floors and dark wood furniture. It’s a bit Elephant Bar, sans all the safari equipment and foliage. It’s posh, it’s fun; it’s almost a magical transport from Castro Valley to the City.
The inside of Genghix in Castro Valley
Their menu has graduated from whatever Asian buffet it used to be to “Asian Fusion”, a phrase with so many interpretations nowadays. What they mean at Genghix is Chinese, Japanese, and Thai (more generally referred to on their site as Southeast Asian and Japanese) and all sorts of awesome combos of these cuisines. When I see a menu selection as large as that at Genghix, I often cringe. Is all this stuff really good? Is it fresh? I haven’t tried everything at Genghix by any means, but what I have had was good.
We’ve gone three times in the course of a week and a half. Two of those times were sequential nights. That’s how much I liked it. To quote Black Rob, “Like Whoa“**.
Despite the huge variety on the menu, I have quite a love for Japanese food (as you may know), and hence this has been exclusively what I’ve ordered to date. Our first trip we ordered a Genghix Roll (fried shrimp, lobster, avocado, tobiko), Double Salmon Roll (salmon inside and salmon on top), and an order of salmon Nigiri sushi. Everything was fabulous. The salmon was tasty and generously proportioned on the Nigiri. And the deep fried roll, well, can you really go wrong there?
Our food from visit #1 to Genghix in Castro Valley
The service on that first visit was also exceptional. The waiter was friendly, helpful, attentive, and he smiled. Like, not just at me in a creepy way, but at us in a nice way. He refilled our waters constantly. He answered our questions. It was wonderful.
Trip number two we went big with our Restaurant.com gift certificate ($50 minimum purchase, we can do it!). Crab won tons, an 18 piece sashimi plate (butter fish, salmon, tuna, albacore), a Tiger Roll (fried shrimp, salmon), and a Magic Cube (chocolate covered white and milk chocolate mousse with a cherry center) for dessert. This meal was truly heavenly. The crab won tons were excellent (but they were deep fried, so that’s not so difficult). But the sashimi melted in my mouth. Literally. Butter fish—which I’ve never before had—was so succulent and savory that I actually ended up saving it for last. The salmon, usually my all-time favorite, came in a paltry third as the albacore was the most flavorful I’ve ever tasted. Even the dessert (good dessert at a Japanese place?) was wonderfully delicious and unique. It was the kind of meal you don’t want to end.
Our food from visit #2 to Genghix
And so we went the night right after as well. We had to bring friends. The service was a bit more “eh” this time, but the food was just as good in my opinion. I ordered a 12 piece sashimi (soooo good) and other orders at the table consisted of three oysters, hot and sour soup, two more fancy sushi rolls, a cucumber avocado roll and another sashimi plate. Except for one forgotten thing by the waiter (though he didn’t admit that he forgot and stated that it was “on the way”, perhaps the most irritating part of that transaction), third time’s a charm for sure.
Our food from visit #3 to Genghix
Needless to say, I love this place. Love, love, love. I want to eat there every night. Maybe someday I’ll get around to trying some of their other Asian dishes (Garlic Shrimp, Sweet and Sour Fish, Orange Scallops, Wok Tossed Garlic String Beans, etc.)…or maybe I’ll just order sashimi until I pop. But even then, I bet they’d clean me up quickly and efficiently and not charge me any extra for the mess.
*This is merely a metaphor, not historical fact.
**Yeah, I totally said that.
