Rangoon Ruby

Don’t waste your time or money. There are so many restaurants on Polk St. I think you would be better anywhere over this place. Food was not good — tasteless and bland. Service was poor. Ambiance OK. This place was so overpriced for what you get. Just an overall huge disappointment since the place looks cool from the outside. On top of all that they allowed some woman to sit next to us with her little poodle dog– Violating California HEALTH AND SAFETY CODE SECTION 114 259 – 114 259.5. When we complained about this and moved to the other side of the restaurant they told us it was a service dog– a bold faced lie. This place was terrible all the way around. You have been warned.

Had lunch here and was not impressed at all. Their chicken crisp reminded me of orange chicken from the panda express. Their sooji dessert was to die for!!! Had the samosas and mango salad and neither made me go yumm. The sauce used for the samosas was very good. Will i come back? Probably not.

This place is delicious! Everything we had was fresh, light, perfectly cooked.

It is nice to have a Burmese place on Polk but it’s a bit hit or miss. I thought the tea leaf salad was good but not as good as Mandalay or Burma Superstar (plus all the off shoots). I had the same opinion of everything else on the menu. Bottom line I would go back for the conveinc. of the location and to quench a craving but I would go to my other spots if I was planning to make a night of it.

Let me preface this review by saying that my boyfriend and I REALLY wanted to like this restaurant. We’ve been to Rangoon Ruby in Palo Alto several times and the food and service has always been excellent (I give that location 5 stars.) I held off on visiting the new SF location because of the somewhat-​poor Unilocal reviews but last night we decided to experience it for ourselves.
The restaurant was completely empty around 8pm whereas the Palo Alto location is constantly busy all days of the week. We confirmed that the menu/​ingredients are exactly the same across both locations. We ordered the tea leaf salad which was pretty consistent with PA. My boyfriend got the lamb curry and I got the mixed vegetable curry with tofu. We were used to these dishes having a nice thick curry sauce but unfortunately both were overly watery. Additionally, all of my vegetables were under cooked. The fried rice with onions/​yellow beans is another one of our favorite PA dishes — in SF the dish was substantially lacking flavor.
As I mentioned we have gone out of our way to eat at Rangoon Ruby in PA. Yes the prices are pretty high: $ 14-​$ 15 for an entrée is fine but $ 10 rice and $ 10 appetizers are very high. I felt the price was justified in PA but unfortunately not in SF. How two locations of the exact same restaurant can differ so much would be an interesting case study for someone ;)
I really wish a manager was commenting on these Unilocal reviews. The manager was in the restaurant yesterday and I found it odd that he didn’t come over and talk to people since only two tables were dining at any given time. This location needs to step it up or I fear they will go out of business.
Lastly, DURING DINING I came across the low food safety rating on Unilocal.This is definitely a concern — everything looked clean to me but something must be wrong back in their kitchen.

I love that there’s a Burmese place that’s a bit closer to me and that isn’t as crowded as the others. This place definitely goes under the radar, and I’m fine with that. Between the food, the wait staff, and the portions, I’m sold! And the flavor combinations… makes my mouth water just thinking about it!
Highly recommend this place if you haven’t tried Burmese food before. Since this place doesn’t appear to be too well known, it’s a bit slower and easier for you to have the wait staff explain the dishes (although all the Burmese places I’ve been to do this). But at least you will have time to think about your order a bit more.
The tea leaf salad and lettuce wraps are my favorite, but don’t forget the fresh coconut drink (comes in an actual coconut).
Likes:
–tea leaf salad!!!
–great customer service
–food quality is great
–nice portions
–easy to get seated, even if you don’t have a reservation
Dislikes:
–parking can be somewhat difficult in this part of town. Recommend walking, public transportation or a car share service.

I wanted to love Rangoon Ruby as I live on Sacramento Street & would love to see a great restaurant go in this space. Unfortunately I was grossly disappointed. The food was blah-​mediocre. And just clicking on Unilocal to write this review I saw the «Consumer Alert: Poor Food Safety Score!» Now I really want to vomit.
«A food safety rating that is in the bottom 5% locally, and is categorized by inspectors as «poor» is unacceptable.
Unless there is a major change, this restaurant will most certainly not make it. A great Burmese restaurant would be an awesome addition to the neighborhood, but Rangoon Ruby is not it. I hope they can quickly turn around this restaurant or they will be gone.

Didn’t see the food safety warning until just now, but didn’t notice anything looking or tasting sketchy. I would agree that it’s a bit overpriced and too fancy for Polk Street, but the food overall is pretty solid. Good service too. If you want the best Burmese, go to the Richmond

I ordered the palata to go
The palata was a good desert. It is like a pancake but crispy and instead of being served with maple syrup, it comes with sugar.
I just had to wait for less than twenty minutes for my food.
It came out fast
The food was good

Good, not great. I thought the food tasted pretty good — the coconut rice was good (3.5÷5), the pad thai with chicken (spicy was not that spicy) was decent (³⁄₅), the spicy chicken was better (⁴⁄₅), and the lettuce wraps were probably the best (⁴⁄₅).
The wine is 2X retail price, which is reasonable. I thought that they overcharged for a lot of other items, so expect to dish out some money.
What dinged them to 2 stars was the delay in food. For a party of 10, 8 people got their food rather quickly, but 2 people didn’t. They stated that it would take another 5 minutes, which means that it was never placed. Also, the waiter was a bit new and young, but did a superb job with our massive party (he panicked quite a bit and forgot to do a few things).
Overall, I don’t think I would return here. I might grab some takeout from time to time, but the overall experience was poor.

Two stars for the tea leaf salad (minus the mealy tomatoes) and coconut rice…
This place is insanely overpriced #1, I’d be ok with the prices if the food wasn’t so mediocre.
We ordered the Tea Leaf Salad, Broccoli & Garlic, Basil Chili Beef and Coconut Rice.
Tea Leaf Salad– Everything you would expect from a tea leaf salad, it’s good but the tomatoes were anemic in color, tasteless and mealy. My other beef with this salad is the huge amount of tea leaf they give you, whoa, what a waste!
Broccoli & Garlic– This is the dish that has caused me to vow never to eat here again. When they say it is tossed in a wok with white wine, they mean OIL. The entire dish was in a pool of oil, almost like a soup. This should be called broccoli and oil soup. DISGUSTING!
Basil Chili Beef– It was ok, good flavor and the beef was tender. It too had a lot of oil but not as bad as the above broccoli.
Coconut Rice– It was good. Sticky and sweet.
At the end of the day, those 4 items ended up costing $ 60. It’s like I took three $ 20 bills and flushed them down the toilet.
It’s Burma Superstar or nothing from now on when I’m craving Burmese…

Went to lunch here at noon and we were pretty much the only customers for 2 hours. It just meant we got great service.
I think the prices are a little high especially for appetizers. They are almost comparable to an entrée price.
Apps we ordered were the palata, samosa soup, and tea leaf salad. The palata was delicious but I wished the curry was a bit thicker to scoop onto the bread. The samosa soup is exactly what it sounds like. Samosas were cut into pieces and made into a soup. The tea leaf salad didn’t have the dried little shrimps I’ve had before, instead it was in powder form but it was still delicious.
The nam gyi dok (curry with rice noodles) was lacking flavor, I think the curry was too watered down. I had to ask for fried chilies to help with the flavor. The crunchy chicken was like an orange chicken. It had a thick batter and heavy sauce, I don’t recommend it. The shrimp curry was the better of our entrees. The shrimp were big and the curry had more texture.

Visited Rangoon Ruby on a quiet Thursday night with a larger party. Overall, I really enjoyed the food and service here.
Food 4 stars: The tea leaf salad was crisp with lots of flavoring. This is one of my favorite salads. For a main, I ordered the walnut chicken. My favorite part about this dish, while rich they didn’t overdo it on the sauce. I’ve had other restaurants add way too much spoiling the entrée overall.
Service 4 stars: Wait staff was incredibly patient with our changing party numbers. I appreciate the restaurant’s efforts to respect the drought with not pouring water, but for large parties I recommend just leaving a pitcher. Two or three times I had to ask for water as some of the other food I sampled was quite spicy.

Great tasting food here. The staff were nice, accepted a big table of 14 fast without a fuss. Everything I tried was delicious: garlic pork was the winner. Mango swai was a great choice as well. Lamb Kwai was okay, probably the most authentic flavors but less interesting (too tomato-​ish). Mango salad was okay but next time we’ll stick with the basic tea salad.
Desserts were the weak point, why did we order desserts? The sooji was good but pricing was un-​proportional (14 $$??? for that? main course was 15 $). The plata dessert was basically one of the appetizers dough thing topped with bananas and ice cream, not my type of dessert and was also priced too high for what it was (12 $).

I was skeptical trying this place out, as it popped up out of nowhere. (I didn’t realize they’d had other locations.) I brought some out of town cousins by for dinner, and we ended up having a delicious meal! The tea leaf salad was different than what I’d had at Mandalay by a little, but that’s how it should be. It was still wonderful.
We shared three entrees:
Lemongrass chicken — my least favorite of the bunch. Not as strong a flavor as I would have liked but still decent.
Lamb kebat — super yummy.
Shrimp curry — the winner! That curry sauce was so so so good. Unlike any other red curry I’ve had before.
I believe their prices are a little too high, especially if you go at lunch, when there is no special lunch pricing. I’d certainly stop in more often for lunch if they had a little bit of an incentive. But, still, very good place and worth stopping in.

I live few blocks from polk street and this place is worth trying out. It is new place on polk street and I think it has only been open for 2 months. It is not as good as burma superstar or Burma love but their tea leaf salad is out of this world (they make it a little different and throw some dried shrimp in it). The fiery tofu chicken and mint chicken is a good choice and would recommend getting it if you like majority of your dish to be protein and not too many vegetables.
The environment seems a little too old school with the whole White Table cloth style. I wish they spiced up the ambiance a little bit with a more unique approach to it and add some culture to fit into the hustling and bustling place on polk street.
I would recommend this place for the good but not so much for the ambiance.

With so many dining options on Polk St. you have to be on top of your game. I realize this place just opened recently, so there’s potential for this place to be a must go. But my visit with a friend left a bit to be desired. The place is definitely nice, white table cloths and all. The food was wonderfully fresh and delicious. I especially loved the pumpkin pork stew and the basil beef. So good I would definitely order again.
Where the place fails is the service. Our server was definitely challenged with a request to change one thing, an order of coconut rice instead of brown rice. He repeated it, I repeated it, then he repeated it. Sounded like he got it, but then out came the brown rice. I mentioned I changed it and he said no that’s what I ordered. Uh no, I changed it. He said he would get another order of coconut rice. Not the worst that could happen, but he seems a bit uncomfortable the rest of the time we were there.
I hope this is just new opening jitters and the service gets better quickly. I like their food so I’ll probably give it another go in a few weeks. Or maybe take out is the better option. We will see so stay tuned.

This place is not $$$.
And it’s not as good as Mandalay.
But, it’s good.
The tea leaf salad is tasty — a highlight. Really liked.
The pumpkin pork stew was so-​so relative to other Burmese spots.
Green beans were cooked really nicely.
All in all, a solid choice.
A little on the pricey side for what they give, but kind of a South Beach (Florida) vibe — out of the box.

Highlights:
Service! The hostess sat us immediately and our server was attentive and polite
Palata appetizer– the sauce was spicy, interesting, and the bread on the side was chewy and warm
Cucumber water– flat water is served when requested (due to drought). The hint of cucumber is a nice added touch
Lowlights:
The Rangoon Lemongrass Pork dish contained very fatty meat– it was a combo of mushy and chewy… I couldn’t quite figure the texture out. Perhaps it was undercooked? I had several pieces, so it want just a one-​off fatty piece either. The peas we’re excellent and the sauce was delicious. My dining partner and I didn’t even bother to take our leftovers home.
The tea leaf salad was good, however, it had too much dressing on it or needed more lettuce. Again, it was good– just not as fabulous as Burma Superstar’s!
I would like to give this place another chance– I believe there is strong potential here!

Polk Street is upping their ethnic food game! Good riddance to the former sushi joint. A small group of us made a beeline to this joint. I had low expectations for Burmese food on Polk street, but the white tablecloths and uniformed waiters sort of blew me away.
mohinga — exceptionally good. they asked how spicy we wanted it and our group was undecided so we kiddingly said «extra medium spicy» well, they delivered on that! it was spicy, but nothing we couldn’t handle. broth was excellent. spicy and robust with just the amount of heat. however, I found the portion to be quite small. We were just a group of 5, but it barely even filled our small bowls halfway and we had to place a second order. another thing was that it came out exceptionally fast, so that was slightly suspect. however it is chowder so it’s probably sitting around in a giant pot simmering.
tea leaf salad — a standard dish when it comes to Burmese food. we ordered this to get a good feel on how authentic their flavors would come across. it came and was prepared tableside. the tea leaf salad at Rangoon Ruby is excellent as I would hold it up to par with another very well known Burmese spot in SF (I know you know what I’m talking about)
lamb kebat — loved!
rangoon chicken curry — for some reason I found this to be insanely spicy. I didn’t eat much of it for this reason, but I did find that the sweetness of coconut rice helped take down the heat a notch.
nan gyi dok — loved! the coconut chicken sauce was not too heavy, just subtle. the fried onions and won ton strips really were the stars in adding texture. I felt there was a little too much hard boiled egg and again, wished the portion were a bit bigger.
side of coconut rice
side of Burmese-​Indian rice — pretty much a biryani in my book. most of the group preferred the coconut rice over this, but I loved it. yes, raisins and all.
dessert
fried banana — standard.
oven baked sooji — everyone in the group seemed to like this but I was just ok with it. The texture was like a sponge and I was not fond of it. But it was still better than the fried coconut pudding.
fried coconut pudding — for once, I was at a loss of words. I couldn’t figure out what to say about this thing. All I said was «I know I talk a lot, but I honestly don’t know how I feel about this»
The thing I didn’t enjoy with the desserts was the coconut ice cream. It was not coconutty at all, but rather had a piña colada taste to it.
My main issue with Rangoon Ruby is the portion size. It cannot feed a small group adequately. You’ll have to order seconds. Price point is a bit higher than most Burmese, and I thought that the location would water down the flavors but I was wrong. I suppose the price point makes sense for the level of service and the ambiance you are getting. Still, Rangoon Ruby is a great Burmese destination in my book.