Apparently, San Jose had its own restaurant week - as I was alerted the day before, as NN needed someone to round out a food outing to Kyusu Burmese Cuisine. I was game, as I had never had Burmese food before!
For restaurant week, there was a set three-course meal for two people. Everyone started off with a tea leaf salad.
The salad comes with your choice of cabbage or lettuce, and is mixed in front of you with your preference for amount of spicy pepper flakes. The taste is terrific: tangy from the tea leaves, nice spice, and lots of textures.
For the second course, you can choose two entrees from a list of three. My meal date SY and I chose the chicken curry. It tastes very similar to a mild Indian curry.
It comes with your choice of either rice or (I think it's called) roti - we chose the roti based on our waitress' recommendation, and it was nice.
Both SY and our dining partners NN and AC picked "Kauk Swe Thoke" as our second course - a cold noodle dish that has a rich sauce and slightly spicy.
NN and AC chose the "Shan Style Fish and Herbs" as their second dish: a claypot with fish and veggies. The fish was tender and there was a lot of flavor.
Finally, dessert is "Sanyinmakin" with ice cream. They described it as Burmese style baked cake, but to me it had the consistency and texture more of custard or mochi. A bit sweet by itself already, but goes well with cold vanilla ice cream.
Overall, I greatly enjoyed the meal, especially the tea leaf salad. Aside from the salad and dessert, the main dishes seem like a mix of Chinese and Indian food - which makes sense, judging from the geographic locale of Burma. I'd like to give their normal menu a try and see what else Burmese cuisine has to offer.
For those of you averse to cilantro though, beware: cilantro is a big part of many of the dishes! (Go thank SY for the heads up, as she had to forlornly pick out the cilantro piece by piece first.)
Kyusu Burmese Cuisine
Kyusu Burmese Cuisine Yelp
San Jose, CA
