Jason F.
Yelp
Affordable Burmese cuisine located in the heart of the Inner Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco. Inle Burmese Cuisine features a homemade spin on traditional cuisine from the nation of Burma/ Myanmar. Inle Burmese Cuisine replaced the long-standing Patxi's Pizza along Irving Street between 9th and 10th Avenues, as they still have a full working kitchen with a small service window that serves as an outlet to their main dining room, with a backyard patio for extra service if need be. Burmese cuisine in the city of San Francisco can be encapsulated by the franchise that is Burma Superstar, which thanks to their immense popularity has made Burmese cuisine have a real shining moment here in the Bay Area. Thankfully, there are more than just a few restaurants serving authentic Burmese cuisine in the Bay Area so our collective palettes have grown accustomed to the unique flavors of spiciness and savoriness. What brought me a group of six other diners here on a weekday evening was the fact it was a celebratory dinner celebrating one person's birthday in our party and making reservations for our party was very easy to do. Upon check in to Inle Burmese Cuisine on our trusty Yelp app, they offer a complimentary mango pudding dessert for your table, of which we would take advantage of later in our meal.
The menu at Inle Burmese Cuisine is separated into categories including Starters, Noodles, Soups, Rice Plates, Sides, Lunch Specials, Dessert and Beverages. Inle Burmese Cuisine considers themselves a restaurant for families, but they don't specialize in family-style cuisine, as our server recommended that we share a few starters and then each order our own entrée to enjoy. We ordered two servings of their signature Tea Leaf Salad which featured romaine lettuce topped with roasted peanuts, fried garlic, fava beans, sesame and sunflower seeds, tomatoes, jalapeños, fish sauce and imported Burmese tea leaf dressing. We also shared two servings of their Paratha with Coconut Curry Dip which was the Burmese version of crispy pancake or a layered bread served with homemade coconut curry dipping sauce. For my entrée, I ordered their Beef Curry which was slow-cooked cubed beef stew served with potatoes, garlic, onion, ginger, chili paste, turmeric and authentic Burmese curry spices. Others in our dining party enjoyed their Pad See Ew with Chicken, Pad Thai with Chicken, Chicken Curry, and their Eggplant with Tofu and Garlic Sauce. A junior member of our party ordered their Chicken Wings, which came four to a plate and the sweet and sour sauce was placed on the side upon request.
The highlight of our meal had to have been their Tea Leaf Salad, which had a unique array of flavors and consistencies of all of the combined ingredients that we would definitely recommend ordering this entrée again, as it gave us a true sense of the authentic cuisine that Burma had to offer. Their Paratha starter was a bit of a miss for us as their pancakes were a little too overcooked for our taste. I liked but didn't love my entrée, as I originally had hesitation ordering this dish as it came without many vegetables, and it was a colorless combination as it at the very least tasted decent overall. I think a lot of us were a little disappointed in some of our entrées, as the eggplant and tofu was more stir-fry than anything else and didn't give my fellow diner a true taste of dining my Burma. Since we celebrated a birthday, we brought our own cake to celebrate, but we forewarned that they charge 15 dollars extra for cake cutting, even though they didn't help cut our cake nor did they even provide a sharp knife for cutting. Our complimentary Mango Pudding was a nice afterthought that made our meal complete, which would come to a little under 200 dollars before gratuity was added in, which was decent. It's nice to know that places like Inle Burmese Cuisine can thrive in these challenging times in San Francisco, with honest homemade cultural cuisine that makes sure to stand out.