Superstar!

Burma Superstar is located on Clement Street near 3rd Street amongst lots of Chinese, Thai, Indonesian, Vietnames and other East Asian restaurants. What makes Burma Superstar stand out, though, is the interesting Burmese cuisine it produces with such high quality on a night-in, night-out basis.

There is a no-reservation policy, and people are willing to wait in line for a coveted table for hours. The smells emanating from inside only help stoke your hunger more. Keep that in mind: if you're starving head down the road a bit for a pint at the Plough and Stars so that your stomach does not drive you crazy.

So, what is Burmese food? Keep in mind that Burma touches China and Laos and is located in between Thailand and India, so you see influences of both South Asia and South East Asia. You'll see samusa on the menu next to egg rolls, for example.

You'll be smelling the amazing flavors and looking over at what your neighbors are having, and be tempted to try everything on the menu. A good way to approach it is to have an appetizer (the aformentioned samusas for example) followed by one of their salads.

The salads are amazing! Almost sublime. Try a salad made with tea leaves. Or one with pickled gingers. All of them have a tremendous amount of ingredients, but the Rainbow Salad -weighing in at 22 ingredients- is the heavyweight. Four types of noodles, green papaya, tofu, onions, dried shrimp, and a tamarind dressing.

Moving up to the main dishes, I highly recommend the Burmese Chicken Casserole with Cardamon Cinnamon Rice. It's actually not just chicken, there's shrimp in it as well. Plus a smattering of raisins and nuts. The flavors infuse each other and it hits the spicy/sweet mix just right.

The restaurant really warrants multiple visits as the menu is so extensive. What do you drink with this? They have a lemon/ginger infused beer which goes really well with the food. They also have an assortment of other beers and wines.