There is no shortage of ethnic cuisine on Buford Highway... That long stretch of road is basically a third world country with unlimited amount of ethnic grub that can be had... If you're lucky you might even find an UXO buried along the way as a souvenir. Everyone's been to all the main players on this stretch- Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Indonesian, Mediterranean, El Salvadorian, Mexican, Bangladeshi, Indian... It's like the fucking United Nations. But a very not well known cuisine has been under-represented in this pretty diverse area that has exploded with more and more options in recent years... Ironically, you're not gonna find strictly Burmese cuisine on Bufo Hwy, but you can get it in the refugee haven of Clarkston. What's that... Where the fuck is Clarkston, you ask? Well, it's the same place where you will find the most sophisticated and world-class dancers performing their repertoire to the hottest new music in the most state-of-the-art and luxurious high-class club where discriminating gentlemen and couples can slip away into fantasyland... At the motherfucking world famous, Strokers! But we will not be eating there on this post or any other post... We're gonna be dining with royalty tonight... Because that's how I roll... And hopefully, I will roll out the door after consuming mass amounts of Burmese vittles. Let's see if we will feast like kings in this ex-hot winglanta joint... The funny thing is that they have wings on the menu, I bet they bought that inventory up for dirt cheap from the previous failure.
The place was dead except for a goofy roundeye couple in the corner table... He was wearing tube socks with mandals and his counterpart had on a moo-moo (sun tarps are so hot right now).... And then all of the sudden a kid pops out from underneath her stylish tarpaulin... It scared the shit outta me, literally, I think I was touching cotton. Grabbed a table and waited and waited... A little girl comes out from behind the counter and brings over some menus... She was like 3 apples high. How many more fucking little kids are gonna start popping out from nowhere? It's like a fucking sweatshop in Burma... But y'all know what that means... The grub will be crazy authentic. The pouch was excited like a peeping turtle.
Then the chef/owner dude comes out to take the order, he was super nice but could barely understand him... Ordered up the palata right away. He comes back 3 minzies later and says we are not making them right now, only for breakfast. I'm like what the fuck dude... Why couldn't you tell me this earlier? You're the cook and that was like the wackiest excuse to not make them. Then I said, let's get the eggrolls then... He says, that's breakfast food, too. We don't have any for dinner. At this point, I'm thinking maybe I shoulda ate at Strokers, instead... Because this joint smelled and looked just like the VIP room but at least I'll be popping bottles and models over there. I basically gave up and just ordered whatever he had available or was willing to make... I think y'all know how this will end...
Buu Thee Gyaw. What did you just call me? Oh, this is a bottle gourd tempura with tamarind sauce... Gotcha. Look at this sad display basket... I have seen better plating at Captain D's with their fish sticks and they give you fries also... All I got was this wack ass tamarind sauce that was more like Mae Ploy straight from the bottle and a few leaves of lettuce. The fried gourd was bland, I'm talking totally unseasoned... It coulda been a sliced up Nerf football tempura battered and fried and I wouldn't even known the difference. Weak start.
Lah Pet Thoke. Tea leaf salad- pickled tea leaves, fried peas, garlic, sesame seeds, peanuts, yellow dal and cabbage... Oh, it also comes with rice. This was the dish that I was most interested in to test their background. It was only decent tasting. It just seemed so rushed and the layers of flavor didn't compliment each other the way it should. Mixed it up and let it sit for a bit, still didn't make any noticeable difference except for the pool of oil at the bottom of the plate. I had high hopes for this dish with it's mixed textures and flavors, but it lacked the proper tea leaf fermentation and acidity to make this dish pop... They did top it off with a handful of small dry shrimp which was a nice touch. I don't know... Maybe I should come during breakfast for this dish like everything else.
Kyay Oh. Pork organ meats soup, vermicelli noodle, yu choy, tofu, quail eggs. Another classic simple comfy dish... It looked and smelled pretty decent but we all know looks and smells can be deceiving... Like at Strokers. The broth was light but flavorful enough to keep the pouch slurping for more. The ground pork was supposed to be offal but it tasted more like plain old ground pork than organ meat... The amount was kinda chintzy and the ragged wads looked freshly picked from the oinker's own snout. The quail eggs, vermicelli and greens were spot on. This noodle bowl was more like something you can make with the leftovers in your fridge than something you would pay for in a resto. It wasn't bad but the composition and execution was severely lacking. It also seemed rushed out without any care or attention to the details.
Fried Noodles. What in lord's name is this... Just open up your freezer and pull out a bag of Kroger mixed veggies, the precooked salad shrimp and chicken bits and a can of La Choy chow mein noodles... Throw all that shit in a wok and voila! This was not good on so many levels... I wouldn't even serve this to prisoners in solitary confinement. This was like something a college kid would make on a hot plate in the closet of a dorm room stoned out of his fucking mind. Jesus, I can't take it anymore, I can't even look at it... Send out some of that pickled tea leaves, I need to smoke something, anything to get high as a mofo. This was such an embarrassment... Maybe that's why they ain't on Buford Hwy.
I had such high hopes for this joint... And I really don't want to piss on them, but it was pretty much a shitshow dish after dish on this visit... Perhaps I ordered the wrong dishes but when the cook doesn't want to make it, you're kinda limited to what they can really do. I mean you gotta have something more than just a great back story behind your journey from refugee to becoming a small business/resto owner. We all love the rags to riches stories but the end product needs to be as good as you claim and it also needs to be available to paying customers. They seem like very nice, humble and hard working people but this visit was a total letdown... I have not written them off yet and if I ever get up early enough for breakfast on a weekend, I might stop by for that palata and eggrolls... Or I can just stumble in after Strokers closes.
1353 Brockett Rd
Clarkston, GA 30021
2 comments:
You need to stop...just stop! You had me laughing out loud for a full minute. Jeez. OK? Your writing is far too rich and comedic to be contained/constrained by your blog. We must take your observations to a wider audience. Let's get a book deal happening - seriously. I'll be your most loyal backer. Comedic gold, I tell you....grind up some truffles and smoke 'em!
Pouch and dekalb farm mkt are the only good things about the A. Forealz.
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