Burma Lane

Friday night get together with girlfriends Charlotte, Lucy and Claire and some quick messages the day before mean we settle on Burma Lane as the choice.

I'm actually 30 minutes early for the table I've booked - couldn't wait to get out of work! It's Friday night! And I enjloy a breather with a pineapple cocktail and my Kindle.


I'm soon joined by my dining companions and we're looked after well with drinks orders taken and menu assistance given. We decided to go with their banquet menu and leave it in their hands.

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Kun Sar Thi - Betel leaf w/ chicken, shallot, peanuts, green mango & Sichuan pepper is first to arrive and we spoon a mix of the chicken combination into our own leaves. It's tasty and spicy and spiked with citrus and very much like what sister restaurant Red Spice Road offers.

Quickly following come:

• 19th street crispy pork w/ lemon, cumin & chilli
• Potato cake filled w/ spicy slow roasted lamb belly, cabbage salad & minty yoghurt

These are big portions. The pork has a crispy top and the meat is tender but fatty and my serve has that gelatinous fat about it so I leave that to one side.

The potato cake is possibly the most delicious potato cake. Crunchy and crispy on the outside, soft and fluffy and flavoursome with a beautiful piquancy from the yoghurt. This as super tasty but pretty hefty on the stomach!

• Pickled tea leaf salad - Tea leaves, tomato, peanuts, sesame seeds, crunchy broad beans & cabbage

The salad comes next and it's vibrant and fresh with different textures. I actually find the tea a bit too pickley and sharp but I enjoy the rest of the ingredients.

• Shan noodles w/ rough chopped slow cooked chicken, peanuts, green onion, chilli, coriander & crispy shallots

No photo but this is a flavoursome dish and I like the thick white noodles and the savoury dark sauce.

Main courses are:

• Rockling cooked in turmeric, lemongrass & tomato w/ noodles, mustard greens & egg AKA Funky Mohingha, a take on a Burmese classic
• Beef cheek curry with pickled green mango & eggplant

The curries are pleasant enough. I can't remember them much so the flavours weren't as distinct as some of the other dishes. More rice would have been welcome as it was teeny bowl that came out to be shared.

For dessert, rather than all of us have the same which would have been the semolina cake with brown butter, toasted almonds, raisins & palm sugar ice cream we were offered a variety which was a great gesture from our waiter and the chef.

Our other desserts were the:

• Sago & coconut pudding w/ coconut & seasonal fruits
• Coffee & ginger cheesecake with burnt white chocolate & crystallized coconut

My favourite was definitely the sago and coconut pudding which was transformed with the use of melon and a watermelon granita. Light, creamy and fruity it was my kind of dessert. I also liked the ice creams but the cake and cheesecake were both a bit flavour intensive for me.

I didn't feel as full as I have done following Red Spice Road banquets. I also didn't feel it was that different in cuisine type and could have been at Red Spice Road! The food was universally good and suited us as a small group and the service was very attentive which isn't always the case at Red Spice Road as they get too busy at times.

A friend of mine told me that when Red Spice Road first arrived on the Melbourne dining scene it was ahead of its time as it was the first Asian / fusion, not $10 a meal, sharing and hip type restaurant. What has since happened is that it's reached a plateau and stayed at that friendly, approachable, likeable but not amazing level and others have overtaken it. But it's dependable, welcomes reservations and fairly consistent so it has found it's place in the market.

It's not somewhere Steve and I would go ourselves as we're probably a bit more adventurous but it's an option to go in a group where everyone will be catered for.