Yamo doesn’t really need the exposure, it isn’t hurting for business. There is almost always a line in front. The restaurant has been around for 10 years, but it looks like it’s been here forever, like it just sprang forth from Mission Creek, steamy, hot, crowded, and unkempt. We’d eaten here before, and I’d always liked it, but it fell off my radar and we hadn’t been in about four years.
Nothing had changed. Thank goodness! The same hard-working ladies, the same kitchen in seeming disarray, the same well-seasoned woks banging and clanging in the fiery cooking station.
There are nine counter seats, and that’s it, hooks on the wall for your coat, and three or four gruff, very busy, Asian women, yelling at you to wait outside with your menu until a seat opens up. You may be asked to place your order before you even get seated. You may be asked to move down to accommodate a party of three. This is that kind of place, and you’d best be willing to cooperate.
Early on a Saturday night, we stood outside for maybe five minutes before we were seated. By the time we left, there was a line out the door.
I was scolded for taking pictures of the kitchen area, although the owner (the sharp-tongued grey-curled lass on the right in the photo above) seemed not to have a problem with my taking pictures of my own food. The women of Yamo are often curt but not rude. They don’t speak a lot of English, except the names of the dishes, which are often yelled through the steamy air – “MangoChickenMANGOCHICKEN!!”
Because it’s so small, and perhaps because personal service is not their forte, there are a lot of take-out orders here. To add to the slight inconvenience factor, it’s a cash-only establishment. Also, no booze. Beverages here are water, Coke, Sprite, and a canned Green Grass Jelly Soda. No cups, either. And you know, it’s not the only Burmese game in town. Our little City boasts at least three Burmese restaurants: Burma Superstar on Clement at the beginning of the Avenues (with outposts in the East Bay and now a sister restaurant in the Mission called Burma Love), Mandalay (probably the “fanciest,” and actually only a few blocks away from Burma Superstar), and Burmese Kitchen (which moved from the Tenderloin, also to the low Aves.). Burmese food is highly influenced by Chinese, Indian and Thai cuisines, so you can see why there’d be so much love for this cuisine in the Bay Area. The flavors are milder, however, I’ve found, in Burmese dishes, than their spicier counterparts.
For me, the star of the show, at any of the Burmese restaurants, is always lahpet thoke – tea leaf salad. It was our final dish here (dishes come out in whatever order they come out), and therefore, perhaps befitting, as all the other dishes are merely opening acts to the headliner. This salad is a national treasure; so much so, there’s even a saying about it in Myanmar (formerly Burma): “Of all the fruit, the mango’s the best; of all the meat, the pork’s the best; and of all the leaves, lahpet‘s the best.” Lahpet means tea, and thoke means salad. Fresh tea leaves are fermented or pickled until soft, and then strewn with the many other ingredients of this fresh and varied salad.
Yamo’s tea leaf salad is a small portion, and unlike at some other, perhaps finer, dining establishments, it is served with its components already mixed together. That is a shame, because it is interesting to see all the various ingredients separately before they’re tossed together. No matter. The end product with its interplay of slightly funky tea leaves, which are now almost a paste, fried peanuts, sesame seeds, dried and fried beans, lettuce or cabbage, dried shrimp, and sometimes tomatoes, is a highly addictive crispy, crunchy, salty, tangy rock concert in your mouth, with Yamo’s version being just a tad sweeter than others I’ve had. The salad is usually dressed with lime or lemon juice, although some places also use peanut oil and fish sauce. This is a dish of incredible flavors and textures running amok on your taste buds. If you haven’t had tea leaf salad before, you should run out and try it. Like, now. RUN. Hurry! We’ll wait.
Next up: Potstickers, your standard, fat, porky, steamed-then-pan-fried creatures, with maybe a few more appealing ginger notes in these than others I’ve had. The first time we had them here, we were given no sauce to accompany them, so we just used a little soy and chili oil.
As we were leaving, I noticed that the people next to us had also ordered them and received an orange-ish dipping sauce, but I wasn’t sure what it was.
See how they glisten? That’s pot sticker love.
I asked our server, a young Asian-American girl, if pot stickers were considered Burmese, and she said “It’s a mix.” She pointed at the owner, and kind of whispered, “She’s a mix, and she’s the most important person here!” So yeah, if you own the joint, you can have Chinese food in your Burmese restaurant. Perusing the menu, I saw chow mein, chow fun, fried rice, black bean tofu…. It was only after the fact that I realized Yamo is actually a Burmese and Chinese restaurant.
My main was the chicken noodle soup.
It’s a beautiful yellow broth, creamy but not super thick, wonderfully coconut-ty, yet very mild, with delicious chunks of flavorful sautéed chicken, and spiced up a tad with the sharpness of slivered red onion. The noodles themselves had a great bite. This for me was a very satisfying and homey dish, comfort food, chipped bowl and all. It’s like your half-Chinese/half-Burmese grandmother yelled at you to wait outside, then wrapped you up in a big warm blanket and spoon-fed you an intoxicatingly luscious soup. It is also perfect hangover food. Not that I would know anything about that.
The BF ordered the house noodles with pork.
Again, the pork was very well seasoned, and the noodles were perfectly cooked. Texture was abetted by scallions, cilantro, and fried crunchy garlic. This was another mild dish, but you have chili oil, sriracha and pickled jalapenos to doctor it up. In both our dishes, the meat-to-noodle ratio was a bit lean. But what do you expect from a restaurant where nothing is over $7.00?
The BF at one point whispered to me, “Everything’s oily here, isn’t it?” And I said “yeah, but not in a bad way.” But he’s right. Burmese cuisine is one that typically uses a lot of oil in its cooking. And I’m right too. For me, the food here is comforting and warm and homey, and sometimes that means you just have to use a little more oil.
On our second visit, we were moved from one end of the counter to the other, thankfully before our food came. We ordered another Burmese staple, the samusa . A samusa is, of course, similar to the Indian samosa, a fried pastry package, often pyramidal, but here more of a fat triangular, stuffed with savory goodies such as spiced potatoes, peas, onions, minced meats, and then baked or deep fried. The samosa, and variations of it, are an extremely popular snack all over the Indian subcontinent, East, Central and South Asia, the Mediterranean, and parts of Africa. Yamo’s samusas are smaller than I’ve had at other places, but were quite nice, very crispily fried on the outside, creamy on the inside, and came with a raw chili dipping sauce.
For my main this time, I ordered a Beef Curry noodle dish.
I have to admit my heart sank a little when the owner placed this in front of me. I’m not the biggest fan of big chunks of green pepper, as I think they tend to overwhelm everything, and I picked around them at first. However, the curry itself was mild, and the potato and noodle combination worked very well for this carb-loving Andean girl, and after a while I went ahead and bit into a pepper and found that it too had a mild flavor and was not crunchy enough to disturb the balance of the dish. While I’m pretty sure this isn’t a Burmese dish, it also did not taste like other curries I’ve had. Would I get it again? Maybe not, but the beef was tender, and overall it was a flavorful plate of food. And filling. You’ll never leave here hungry.
The BF had the house noodle dish again, but this time with chicken.
This really may be the winning dish – this and its pork counterpart – for all around good flavor, satisfying contrasts in texture, and overall hominess. I’d definitely get this dish again, or the chicken noodle soup, with an order of pot stickers and some chili oil. The menu is bigger than I’m making it seem: they also have a mango salad, a chicken salad, a cold noodle dish, a fish chowder, fried rice, curried prawns, and some veggie dishes, etc.
Our bill on each occasion was about $24+. We overtip here. You should too. We may try take-out next time, so we can crack open a beer and get cozy. Perfect for this upcoming winter’s rainy nights. Or, go in and watch the show these kick-ass women put on.
Read all of our restaurant reviews and find out what to order – and what to avoid.
Yamo
3406 18th St,
San Francisco, CA 94110
Phone:(415) 553-8911
http://sfyamo.com/
I think my first meal here was in 1996 – worth doing the reporting to find out. It’s great they’re still thriving. We affectionally call Yamo “Turbo Thai”.
Ift restaurant has been around for 10 years, how was I eating there in the 90s?