I recently read about Indianapolis having one of the largest Burmese communities in the US, mostly concentrated on the south side. Due to this, I wanted to try out some Burmese food but I didn't want to deal with the Eclipse 2024 Day traffic to get down there. Instead, I found a place closer by that promised to have good authentic Burmese food.
Burmese Tea Leaf Salad ($8.99) - The components come separate for you to mix up yourself. There's a very pleasing mixture of textures to delight the mouth. A crunch from the mix of fried chickpeas, green peas, broad beans, and peanuts. A crisp from shredded cabbage. A burst of soft freshness from a bunch of thinly sliced tomato. And finally the squishy tea leaves. The leaves are fermented, but aren't too pungent. Overall, the taste is that classic blend of fishy, spicy, savory, sweet, sour. I didn't get to eat too much of this tea leaf salad but thought what I ate was pretty good. (4/5)
Fried Opo ($7.99) - I don't remember ever eating opo before. This is a tender green squash, with a mellowed crunch, that's surprisingly juicy inside. It's very mild flavored with no particular sweetness. It's battered, fried, and served with a dipping sauce that's fishy, nutty, sour, with a very concentrated savoriness. There's sweet soybean powder heaped on top of the sauce to mix in as you please. It's a delightful mix of textures and flavors. (4/5)
Burmese Mon Beef Curry ($11.99) - This was the daily or weekly special and was not labeled as being spicy. We also did not get asked for our spice level preference so we assumed this would be pretty mild. Bad mistake. This was ridiculously spicy (speaking as someone who usually gets Nashville-style chicken Hot). The flavor of the curry comes out well for the first second after sipping it - it's lemongrassy with a meaty savoriness. Then the spice hits and starts to build and build, drowning out the other flavors. Texture-wise, this curry is a bit more watery than, for example, a Thai curry. There's no coconut milk added to help mellow out the spiciness. The beef is sinewy and kind of tough - it could probably be stewed longer to improve the tenderness. There's no other visible ingredients other than chunks of beef in the curry. The curry is served with a portion of rice, but it's not enough to help tamper down the spicy. (too spicy/5)
Burmese Chicken Coconut Noodle Soup ($9.99) - The first taste to really hit me as I drank the broth is that of fish sauce. Then the other flavors come - a bit of sweetness from the coconut milk and a very mild spiciness from chilis. The soup is extremely thick and reduced. I was expecting a curry mee or laksa type of viscosity, but this took it to an extreme. The ingredients inside the broth includes pretty typical smooth sliced chicken that I'm sure they use for their other dishes, thick rice noodles that are decently bouncy but I felt are a little bit overcooked, and a hard boiled egg that has a bit of the green sulfur ring on the yolk. The egg falls apart a bit in the broth and worse, it's not peeled fully. There are pieces of egg shell still attached to the egg and some pieces floating around in the soup. Unfortunately, they are not visible due to how viscous the broth is and how many ingredients are stuffed in the dish. Instead, I only found this out when I started chewing and every few bites there was that disturbing egg shell crunch in my mouth. This repeated every so often as I ate. Not good. To round out the dish, there is a generous amount of fresh red onion, green onion, and fresh cilantro on top. (4/5 if no egg shells, 1/5 because of the egg shells).
Bathrooms: One individual room for women and one individual unisex room.
The flavors of the food served at HTAW METTA are good, but the egg shells in the noodle soup and not informing us how spicy the curry is really ruined things for me. There are tons of other restaurants around that don't make simple mistakes like that.