Burma Love Is Rationing Its Signature Tea Leaf Salad Due to Supply Chain Issues

Customers clicking onto the website for Valencia Street Burmese food destination Burma Love will encounter devastating news. Since 1992 Bay Area denizens have counted on the pair of Burma Superstar restaurants (though soon to be three) to dole out Myanmar cuisine, often with a Tea Leaf Salad in the mix. But for now, you’ll be asked to keep those salad orders to just one, as Burma Love has fallen prey to the infamous supply chain shortages — and they’re nearly out of fermented tea leaves.

The note reads: “Due to global supply chain shortages and delivery delays, we are currently running low on our supply of fermented tea leaves from Burma.” For now, that means the restaurant will only sell tea leaf salads to walk-in and dine-in customers. If you’re determined to stay indoors, the restaurant encourages customers to try out another salad with more readily available ingredients.

Of course, the folks at Burma Love aren’t the first in the area to suffer from shortages. From coast to coast, the unique pandemic combination of worker shortages and the omicron surge has impacted the food supply. And by the way, if you’ve been refraining from supporting the Burma Superstar chain, which includes Burma Love, since the company faced allegations of wage theft back in 2016, there’s always Mandalay over in the Richmond.

Stinking Rose reopens right down the block

Today is the first day of the rest of the Stinking Rose’s life. As first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, the too-weird-to-live and too-weird-to-die North Beach restaurant, known for its highly garlic-infused menu, began operating out of 430 Columbus Avenue, rather than 325 Columbus Avenue, where it’s doled out the smelly goods since 1991. Owners Jerry Dal Bozzo and Dante Serafini listed the restaurant for sale in 2020 but decided to reopen in the old Calzone’s space (which they also own).

Napa wine pioneer Nicholas Molnar dies at 94

Nicholas Molnar proved Napa wrong, and he did so after escaping Hungary in 1956 when Budapest failed to topple the Stalinist government — no easy feat. The Chronicle wrote yesterday that when he purchased his Carneros acreage he was told the land was too harsh for grapes. Molnar lived his truth: first in Carneros, then again in Lake County. [Chronicle]

Woods Beer & Wine to open in San Anselmo

On Friday, the much-beloved ode to fermented beverages Woods announced its first North Bay location on Instagram. The crew has taken over 649 San Anselmo Avenue, and they say they’ll need some time until the space is ship shape. Expect their opening in late 2022.

Mindfulness inspiration Thich Nhat Hahn dies

Known to many by his advice to slow down and experience eating an orange, Vietnamese activist and ambassador Thich Nhat Hahn died at 95-years-old in Hue, Vietnam. The poet and practitioner of peace was known to sell out shows at the Berkeley Community Theater in the late 1990s. Interviewed in a grove between Gilroy and Watsonville, the monk told the Chronicle that practicing open-mindedness is like eating fruit: “We have the right to enjoy all kind of fruits, and we have the right to enjoy every spiritual tradition of humanity.”