Review: At Nine & Night, Burmese chef brings Thai home to Black Rock

Fans pining for Htay Naing and his black pepper beef can find them in Amherst Sreet

Counter-clockwise from upper left: yum woon sen, Thai beef salad, pork pad ka pow at Nine & Night

Htay Naing is back in black – Black Rock, actually.

As Nine & Night, the Burmese cook drew crowds and made faithful regulars at the former West Side Bazaar, where was one of the busiest restaurants.

After a fire knocked out the facility, Abyssinia Ethiopian Cuisine and Nile River, its South Sudanese restaurant, re-emerged at the Downtown Bazaar. In Hamburg, 007 Chinese Food carried on its dim sum offerings.

Questions about whether Nine & Night would once again serve its heady green curry, black pepper beef, and bracing green papaya salad never stopped coming, until Naing opened in March. In a quiet, sunny dining room across the street from Spar’s European Sausage, with a view of Church of the Assumption, Naing and company are bringing a new menu to the neighborhood.

Htay Naing is happy to get back to work.

Burma and Thailand are neighbors, and many of Buffalo’s Burmese residents spent years in Thailand before immigrating to the United States. That’s why many of Buffalo’s Burmese-owned restaurants lead with Thai dishes that Americans know better, and slip in a little home cooking around the edges.

So fans of Thai cuisine can go for the papaya salad ($7.99), built on crunchy, pleasantly astringent shredded green papaya, tossed in fish sauce vinaigrette with chopped green beans, matchstick carrots, cherry tomatoes, poached shrimp, and peanuts, if desired.

Then next time opt for tea leaf salad ($7.99), the vegan crunch riot that is the Burmese national dish. Tea leaves, fermented like sauerkraut, chopped fresh tomato, shredded cabbage, fried split peas, peanuts, with garlic oil and lemon juice.

Thai beef salad ($12.99) at Nine & Night is made with sti-fried, not grilled beef, tossed with cucumber, tomato, bell pepper, onion and cilantro, and a lime to squeeze for added zip.

Thai coconut curries ($12.99) come in chile-forward red, robust Penang, its flavor deepened with shrimp paste, and aromatic green, verdant with herbs. Pick your protein, or stick to vegetables, and pour that gravy over your rice with glee.

Or play pick your pasta.

Mama noodles are Thailand and Burma’s favorite instant noodles. Made of rice, they’re slightly thicker than Japanese-style instant ramen. Udon noodles are almost pencil-thick, chewy wheat pasta. All $11.99-$12.99 with your choice of protein.

Yum woon sen, seafood salad, at Nine & Night

Or consider pad see ew ($12.99), broad rice pasta ribbons stir-fried with vegetables and an egg, in soy caramel, with your choice of protein, including meats or tofu, or just vegetables.

Yum woon sen ($12.99) is Thai seafood salad, built on clear, chewy bean thread noodles. They’re tangled with bell pepper, scallion, tomato, and cilantro, with poached tail-on shrimp and squid rings.

Fried ramen coconut noodle with seafood, Nine & Night

Japanese instant ramen noodles are the base of Nine & Night’s fried ramen coconut noodle ($12.99). Its intense richness reminded me of a creamy diavolo pasta of yore, with dairy cream swapped out for coconut, and a curry kaleidoscope instead of tomato as background. The fire remains the same – medium was as far as I was comfortable going on the Nine & Night spicy scale.

It comes with a lime wedge. In this and all other Nine & Night offerings with a fresh citrus sidekick, it should be squeezed over the dish for a final blessing of flavor.

Pad ka pow ($12.99) is the Thai dish that makes me think of breakfast diner specials I have known. Pile of starch, pile of meat and gravy, topped with a fried egg.

The starch is rice, the gravy built on two types of soy sauce and oyster sauce, and that’s licorice-scented Thai basil in the meat, not parsley. But the pleasure of cutting a jiggly egg yolk into the proceedings to enrich the universal sauce remains.

Nine & Night’s house specialty, black pepper beef, is on the sweet side, despite its moniker. There is plenty of black pepper, to be sure, but its sweet side – combined with another egg yolk – balances it out into a racy shambles that I’ve ordered more than any other Nine & Night offering.

Bubble tea ($4.99) comes in a rainbow of flavors. Tempura shrimp ($6.99) or coconut shrimp ($6.49) are appetizer choices, along with crispy chicken spring rolls ($5.99) and crab rangoon ($6.49), fried wontons stuffed with surimi, green onion, garlic, and cream cheese.

The one treat to hold out for is mango sticky rice ($6.99). A bed of warmed, sweetened rice, almost stiff as fudge, bears fresh sliced mango, glazed with coconut cream. It’s a simple sweet at the end of an intricately spiced meal.

There’s many paths to satisfaction for eaters of all persuasions, at a restaurant where nothing hits $15. If you want to Thai one on in Black Rock, head for Nine & Night, where Naing and company are adding a little pad ka pow to Black Rock’s chow.