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Second Helpings

To Your Good Health

    The ginger salad at Nan Yang restaurant begins as a delicate pastel palette of ingredients arranged separately on a white serving plate. In the center is a mound of finely sliced raw cabbage. This is surrounded by little groupings of what will be mixed in.
    Next comes the aromatic part.
    Nancy Chu—co-owner and co-chef of the Burmese-style eatery with her husband, Philip Chu—says tossing the salad is an art. Expect it to be done by your server, who has been advised to toss, and not stop tossing, until the garlic oil-and-lemon juice dressing has infused all of the other 13 ingredients. You will know this has happened when the fragrance wafts deliciously upward.
    At this point, it’s time to get down to taste and texture. Freshly toasted yellow split peas, fava beans, peanuts, shredded cabbage and onion are responsible for the delightful crunchiness. Shredded ginger, ground dried shrimp, garlic and lemon juice are all evident in the fresh, gently piquant flavor.
    When the Chus first opened their restaurant in Oakland’s Chinatown in 1983, Philip Chu was a practicing architect who loved to cook. By 1992, when they moved to their present location on College Avenue in Rockridge, he had made the transition to full-time chef.
    Core ingredients of Burmese cooking, says Nancy, are garlic, lemon and onion. “Thai cooking uses a lot of sugar, which we don’t,” she explains. And while there is a spice influence from India in some of their curries, the Chus keep their menu as traditional as
possible. Nancy visits Myanmar (previously Burma) annually, bringing back ideas for her husband, who prefers not to travel.
    The ginger salad, says Nancy, is typically Burmese—something one might eat in a rural area after the harvest. “It can rain [in Myanmar] for four or five months of the year, and people like to eat ginger to keep the blood circulating well.” When it comes to getting the taste buds going, Nan Yang’s ginger salad succeeds. Nan Yang, 6048 College Ave., (510) 655-3298, 11:30 a.m.–10 p.m. Tue.– Sat. (weekdays closed 3 p.m.– 5 p.m.), 12 p.m.–9:30 p.m. Sun., closed Monday.