Review: At Bamboo Ridge, a new citizen brings his Burmese-Thai skills to Allentown

After cooking on two continents, Hla Thu get to feed people his favorites

Buffalo is a city made by immigrants. In the heart of Allentown, Hla Thu is staking his claim to his own American dream at Bamboo Ridge. Born on Ramree Island in Burma, Thu immigrated to the United States in 2015. In 2023, he became an American citizen.

In November, with help from customers and friends, he opened Bamboo Ridge, his restaurant at 244 Allen St. With a professional resume that includes two continents and four kitchens, Thu offers a broad selection of Burmese and Thai dishes, along with Chinese and Vietnamese dishes whose popularity across national boundaries has made them part of the Southeast Asian canon.

Lapeth thoat, Burmese tea leaf salad (A24, $9.99), comes as a huge surprise to first-timers. Olive-drab fermented tea leaves are tossed with diced tomato, shredded cabbage, and a kaleidoscope of crunch: fried garlic, fried beans, peanuts, and sesame seeds. The whole shebang is dressed in garlic oil and lime juice, for a stone cold vegan stunner of a salad.

If you’re aiming to get acquainted with Burmese cuisine, my top two suggestions are tea leaf salad and Burmese coconut curry chicken noodle soup (S4, $14.99), ohn noh kouk swe. Soothing coconut broth, golden with turmeric and thickened slightly with chickpea flour, hides fat egg noodles, and chicken. Sliced hardboiled egg, sliced onion, and crunchy noodles adorn the surface. Squeeze in the lime wedge, give it a stir, and enjoy some Burmese comfort food.

Kat kyay kite (N10, $14.99) is the Burmese cousin of Thai classic pad see ew, flat rice noodles stir-fried in soy caramel with egg, bean sprouts, onion, chana beans, and your choice of protein.

Thai basil noodles with shrimp at Bamboo Ridge.

Bamboo Ridge also offers a vast array of Thai cuisine, more familiar to Buffalonians.

Here, Thai beef salad (A29, $14.99) involves sliced steak, shaved red onion, fresh mint and licorice-adjacent Thai basil, lemongrass, cucumber, scallion, and onion, tossed in lime-fish-sauce vinaigrette and crunchy with a sprinkling of toasted rice flour. Unlike most Thai purveyors in Buffalo, Bamboo Ridge asks you how you want your steak done. We asked for medium rare, and were happy with the results

Popular Thai soups go for $5.99, including coconut-based tom kha and tom yum, with crimson chile-lemongrass broth. A whole fried red snapper is the most expensive dish on the menu: $25.99. Coconut curries ($14.99-$17.99) come in panang, red, green, yellow, mango, and eggplant.

Speaking of Thai curries, please note that Bamboo Ridge has quite specific metrics to dial in your desired level of chile heat.

“Scale of spice” is actually two scales, one for the locals, with four steps from “mild” to “very spicy.” Then there’s a separate scale labeled “Thai hot,” one to five stars.

Kat kyay kite, stir-fried Burmese rice noodles, at Bamboo Ridge.

Makes sense, really. Many people in Southeast Asia and elsewhere regularly eat bird’s eye chiles or something spicier for breakfast. Bird’s eye chiles measure 50,000-100,000 Scoville units, while your everyday jalapeno tops out around 8,000. Tastebuds born under fire need something closer to tactical-grade pepper spray before they feel the glow.

All of which is another way of saying that you should probably stick to the first heat scale, unless you grew up at a table with a bottle of lava.

Chinese-American standards orange chicken and sesame chicken ($14.99) are here for you, along with crab rangoon (A5, 5/$6.99).

My favorite Chinese cover at Bamboo Ridge is mee wonton soup (S4, $14.99), the Hungry Man Dinner of Asian soups. It’s chockablock with sliced roast pork, pork-filled wontons, shrimp, egg noodles, chicken, and gai lan greens.

Som tum green papaya salad ($10.99), invented in Laos, has caught on across Asia. Bamboo Ridge’s version is sour and crunchy for all the right reasons.

Chinese and Japanese restaurants in Buffalo are not particularly known for desserts. In almost any Burmese restaurant in the Buffalo area, you may find mango sticky rice. That’s a particular type of glutinous rice steamed and mixed with coconut milk. A layer of warm rice topped with sliced fresh mango, mango cream and black sesame seeds or other garnish makes the dish.

Mango sticky (black) rice at Bamboo Ridge.

At Bamboo Ridge ($6.99) customers can choose from standard white sticky rice, or black sticky rice, which uses a cultivar more like “wild rice” – chewier, nuttier.

When Italian immigrants opened restaurants in Buffalo, their neighbors learned about spaghetti and meatballs. When Greek immigrants opened restaurants we got to make chicken souvlaki part of our collective menu. If you haven’t tucked into tea leaf salad or mee wonton soup before, check in to Bamboo Ridge to taste some of the latest, greatest additions to the American melting pot.