Burma Road: Lil Burma Food Truck Comes To SoMa StrEat Food Park

We've seen Korean food trucks on the streets of San Francisco.  Chinese food trucks. Japanese food trucks. Filipino Food trucks. Vietnamese food trucks. Thai food trucks. Until now we've not had a Burmese food truck (not counting a rogue Burmese food purveyor that operated briefly a couple of years back from a borrowed truck at a borrowed location).  Now comes Lil Burma, a fully permitted food truck with a Rangoon chef and a menu of authentic Burmese specialties. The founder of Lil Burma, which also does catering, is Lewis Eng who, according to the company's website, is originally from Rangoon, with parents from Meiktila and Mandalay, and a chef since 1985.

Lil Burma debuted at SoMa StrEat Food Park just last Friday and I caught up with it there today while on a Costco run.  It was featuring a menu of signature Burmese dishes, inclucding Burma's "National dish" (by most accounts), mohinga, and local food fan favorite, tea leaf salad:

1) Catfish Soup with Rice Noodle (Moh Hinga)
2) Coconut Chicken Noodle (Ohn No Khauk Swe')
3) Tea Leaf Salad (Lap Pat Thouk)
4) Noodle Salad with Chicken (Kyat Tha Khauk Swe' Thouk)
5) Burmese Curry Prawn (Pa Zune Se Pyan Chet)
6) Burmese Curry Chicken with Lemon Grass (Kya Tha Zapalin)
7) Indian Style Curry Chicken (Kalar Kyat Tha Se Pyan)

I chose the mohinga, a benchmark of sorts for me, which I have eaten from ceramic bowls at sitdown restaurants, from paper bowls on my lap sitting on the grass at Thingyan festivals, and now from a plastic soup takeout container from a food truck. It's basically a catfish chowder with rice vermicelli, chopped clilantro, chick peas, shallots, garlic, chilies and lime wedges. Although my bowl (er, container) of mohinga had the Stoneware Soup Principle* working against it , it was a substantial and savory creation and a worthy example of its genre. and inducement enough to return to the Lil Burma truck and work through the rest of the menu.

Given the City's reputation among gastro-tourists as a place to try out Burmese food,  It's only right that SF now has Burmese in it's food truck mix.

*The heavier the bowl, the tastier the noodles

The Richmond's Xi'an Gourmet Restaurant Brings Welcome New Choices to San Francisco

I fell in love with many of the foods of Xi'an more than five years ago at David Shih's Xi'an Famous Foods in Flushing, NY's now legendary Golden Mall and have been lamenting the near total absence of this cuisine from San Francisco ever since.  I am happy to report that it is now possible to get my Xi'an food "fix" in San Francisco, thanks to Xi'an Gourmet Restaurant at Geary Boulevard and 2nd Avenue.

A couple of weeks ago, San Dong House restaurant, looking for a way to distinguish itself from the growing number of local hand-pulled noodle joints (with and without "Shandong/Sandong" in their names), morphed into Xi'an Gourmet. It was not a gratuitous makeover: the chef at San Dong House was from Xi'an and, it appears, has an assertive grasp of his hometown cuisine, at least judging from to two items I had today.

I found out about Xi'an Gourmet over breakfast, from perusing the Yelp listing of new businesses (say what you will about Yelpers -- they may not always get it right, but they almost always get it first). After that Big Reveal I resolved to be there for lunch, and so I was.  Xi'an Gourmet's menu is quite long and varied, since the Shandong cuisine items remain on it, as well as the requisite Chinese food Golden Oldies. The 30-odd Silk Road dishes are quite easy to find, though, in the two sections of the menu labeled "House Special" and "Hand Pulled Noodle" though you might want to throw in some skewers or Shandong dumplings as well. I chose two bell-wether Xi'an items, a lamb roujiamo ("Shaanxi Sandwich with Cumin Lamb") and a noodle dish called you po mian or sometimes you po che mian (here "Shaanxi Hand Made Noodle"), both items which I  am quite familiar with from New York and Shanghai.

I consider Xi'an Famous Foods' lamb roujiamo a benchmark, simply because I've eaten so many of them, and Xi'an Gourmet's stacks up well to them.  Overall, XG's version was about the same size and as full of meat as XFF's version.  XG's lamb seemed slightly less fatty, but at least as aggressively spiced with cumin, jalapenos and chili oil as XFF's.  Xi'an Gourmet's buns were a bit denser and more impermeable than Xi'an Famous Foods', which gave them a nice crunchiness but made XG's roujamo messier, as the buns didn't absorb the chile oil and juices as well. XG's lamb roujiamo are also more expensive, at $5.95, though they also serve a pork version for $3.95.

The you po mian is a tossed noodle dish, with rough, fat, hand-pulled noodles sitting in a puddle of spicy oil and topped with ground dried chilis and other condioments, then tossed.  I'll be writing more about this noodle dish in my separate noodle blog, but will say that it was very similar to a version of the dish I had in Shanghai, and didn't suffer by comparison to with any other version of you po che mian I have had.

I'll be returning within the week to vet the yang rou pao mo (a hearty lamb soup that uses torn up flatbread instead of noodles) and will have a further report once I've analyzed and cherry-picked the menu.

Xi'an Gourmet, 3741 Geary Blvd. at 2nd Ave., San Francisco

Lap Cheong and Latte -- Only at iCafe

Guangzhou King & King (L) becomes iCafe (R)

Guangzhou King & King was one of the last two places in San Francisco Chinatown offering house-made Chinese sausage for retail sale, so I was somewhat dismayed when it appeared to have morphed into a coffee shop, iCafe, even though it was serving "the best coffee in Chinatown." To tell the truth I'd not often been in the market for lap cheong (Chinese sausage), but it was comforting to walk by and see the strings of various types of Lap Cheong hanging at the back of the store. It would be sad to see it go. Fortunately, it was not so. A Twitter follower who saw the Instagram I posted pointed out that the Chinese sign on iCafe mentioned BBQ, so I decided further research was in order.

Sure enough, I discovered when I returned early enough in the day to tolerate some caffeine, several varieties of house-made lap cheong were on display, laid out horizontally in glass cases behind the counter, which was adorned with pastry cases.  It was just a "remodel," said the owner with a grin.

Lap cheong can be see laid out behind the coiunter

iCafe offers a full menu of coffee and tea trinks including espresso drinks, Vietnamese iced coffee, Hong Kong Milk Tea and even the peculiar Hong Kong mix of coffee and tea, as well as hot chocolate and ovaltine, but blessedly, NO bubble tea drinks. There are also a variety of pastries and packaged munchies to accompany your drink.

A menu that would look at home in Hong Kong

To complete the transformation of a Chinese charcuterie into a Western cafe a la Hong Kong, where is artwork on the wall for sale by an artist named Nate1, a friend of the owners.  Fittingly, the art work even included a bit of lap cheong art.

Lap cheong art.

As I sipped a tasty latte and pondered the metamorphosis, it all began to make sense to me.  The storefront had never been used as a work space, and the goods on offer were mainly strung up behind the counter, leaving a lot of unused space. The loyal sausage customers were going to wade through whatever was in their way to score their handmade lap cheong, and any additional revenue from a coffe shop would be gravy, as it were. And, I suspect, there was another good reason for the enterprise. Nobo, half of the couple that owns the establishment is as friendly and garrulous as an Irish bartender, and probably happy to have some ears to bend to get him through the day. He, incidentally, not only makes the lap cheong, and, on this day, the coffee drinks, but also bakes the pastries, I was told.

Butcher, baker and latte maker Nobo of iCafe

Incidentally, I didn't get to meet Nobo's partner Diana, who, unfortunately, was recuperating from an illness. According to the scattering of Yelp reviews iCafe has garnered in its short existence, Diana is every bit as friendly as Nobo. Stop by for some coffee and conversation, and grab some artisanal lap cheong to take home.

iCafe is at 57 Walter U. Lum Place, jsut off Washington, on the backside of Portsmouth Square

France Délices Truck Debuts At SoMa StrEat Food Park. They Had Me At Merguez

If you know me, or even if you only read my blogs, you know I'm not a Frenchy food kind of guy. But when Carlos Muela told me a new French street food truck would be slangin' sausage sandwiches, I decided to check out the debut of France Délices at Muela's SoMa StrEat Food Park.

They had me at merguez.

I love the spicy Mediterranean sausage known as merguez. It's my favorite of all sausages, especially when made from my favorite of all meats, lamb. On my trips to Montreal, a well-dressed grilled merguez sausage sandwich on a french roll from An-Nasr at the Jean-Talon market trumps a medium fat from Shwartz's at the top of my must-eat list. A Montreal merguez sandwich, especially with its Lebanese twist, is probably not replicated anywhere else in North America, but I'm always ready to applaud a good stand-in, and here was a credible candidate staring me in the face.

France Délices' menu is simplicity itself. There are four choices of grilled sausage sandwiches: lamb merguez, chicken merguez, wild boar with apple and cranberries and one with -- wait for it -- my second favorite animal flesh, duck, somehow combined with figs. (The cunning bastards, they know I'll be back to try that one.) A sausage sandwich on a soft French roll with your choice of two toppings is $7.00.  The truck also offers hand-cut frites (Freedom fries to you) served Euro-style in a large paper cone, with your choice of dips for $4.00.  But wait! There's the "meal deal," which gets you a sandwich, fries and a drink (soda or bottled water) for a flat $10.00. That would be me, see?

I ordered my merguez sandwich with sauerkraut and sweet peppers as toppings. It did not disappoint. There were two decent-sized links of merguez sausage, and the spicing and texture seemed right on, compared to what I have become accustomed to.  With a slightly firmer bun and some chopped green olives as a topping option, it would have been a pretty good facsimile of my beloved Montreal merguez sando.  As it is, it was a winner of a sandwich on its own, and the fries went down well too, especially with the ailoi dressing I selected.

The artfully and whimsically decorated France Délices is from the same people who created the Golden Waffle cart that graces SoMa StrEat Food Park on Friday nights.  I'll be checking for future appearances, and returning for the duck sausage sandwich, guaranteed. And probably for the wild boar and.....

And by the way, France Délices folks, if you are  listening, let me put a bug in your ear. Since you've already got the sauerkraut and four kinds of sausage going, how about putting together a nice robust choucroute garni platter for dinner service at SoMa?  That, some cold beer and a Giants game on the telly would be a great way to while away a couple of hours on a not-too-chilly evening.

Notable Nosh: Frikadelle Slap Chip Roll at Amawele's South African Kitchen Leaves Me Frikkin' Slap-happy

Sometimes you find things in the oddest places. Tucked away in the northwest corner of the cavernous Rincon Center food court, home of the grandiloquent dim sum palace Yank Sing and a neighboring flock of well-scrubbed and generally dumbed-down quick service outlets, you'll find Amawele's South African Kitchen.  Yes, it's shiny and new, but it's a mom-and-pop (uh, make that mom-and-daughters) operation and boasts a menu filled completely with Durban street food-type items entirely new to the eating experience of most of us.

I headed to Amawele's today hoping to test drive Durban's iconic Bunny Chow, which is featured on their menu, but they were out of it by 12:45 when I arrived.  I'll get back there for that and have a full report later (hint: "bunny chow" is not a lettuce salad), but in the meantime, I settled on something equally intriguing in name, a Frikadelle Slap Chip Roll.  A frikadelle is a spicy, flat South African meatball (beef, in this case). The name apparently comes from a similar German or Danish meatball, but a Malaysian friend, claims the South African frikadelle was inspired by Malaysian-Indonesian bergedil; given the multiple cultural influences on South African cuisine, that's entirely possible. The frikadelle roll uses a banh mi-like baguette, stuffed with the meatballs, french fries (or "slap chips") all coated with a thick curry. Think of it as banh mi meets Bombay meets Primante Brothers. As is obvious from the picture at the left, it's a messy affair, so grab lots of napkins. According to Amawele's menu, the frikadelle roll contains "South African meatballs stuffed with mint, onions, basil, green peppers flavored with fennel, lavender basil and thyme served in a bread roll with grilled onions and vinegar french fries (Slap Chips)" It's not entirely clear which condiment is in the meatball and which is in the sauce, but the bottom line is that my very filling frikadelle roll was frikkin' delicious.

"Amawele" is the Zulu word for twins, and Pamela and Wendy Michaelson who run the place, helped out (or perhaps shown the way) by their mother, are in fact, twins. The establishment recently moved to Rincon Center after a brief existence at an obscure Ninth and Noriega location and, judging from the lines and instant fan club they've generated, it was a wise move. In addition to the Bunny Chow and the Frikadelle Roll, Amawele's menu includes Cape Malay Curry rice, Durban Curry Roti Wraps , and Vetkoek, a deep-fried donut-like roll sliced and stuffed with (you guessed it) chicken curry. All items come with vegetarian counterparts. Based on my experience today, I'll be returning to try them all.

Where noshed: Amewele's South African Kitchen, Rincon Center, 101 Spear St., San Francisco