One of the things that Tiyo Shibabaw is looking forward to the most about moving her Oakland-based Burmese restaurant, Teni East Kitchen, to a new location in March is space for a steamer.  

“It’s a bigger kitchen,” she says. “The kitchen we currently have is very small, I would love to offer steamed vegetables and seafood.” 

In fact, whole steamed fish is likely to be one of the new additions to the menu at Teni East Kitchen once it moves from its current location on Broadway at 40th Street (next to Clove and Hoof) to 3770 Piedmont Avenue, formerly home to sadly missed Israeli restaurant Pomella.

Shibabaw, who’s originally from Ethiopia (her family still runs eateries there), cut her teeth as general manager at Burma Superstar before launching Teni East in 2016. She was happy to stay in Oakland, even though she’s had tempting offers of space over the hills into Contra Costa County.

“It’s a happy medium without moving out of Oakland,” she says. “It’s a minimum disruption for both our customers and staff. It is very exciting for me.”

The San Francisco Chronicle has called Shibabaw’s restaurant “the Bay Area’s most underrated Burmese restaurants” and the Michelin Guide calls it “worth the wait” for “fresh, flavorful, and unfussy” food such as coconut curry chicken, pea shoot salad, and flaky roti, a pan-fried flatbread.

Shibabaw’s menu offers Burmese flavors with a California point of view. Her Burmese tea leaf salad, for example, is made with kale, as well as the traditional tea leaves and nuts.

In Burma (officially known as Myanmar), the salad is “not eaten with vegetables and greens,” Shibabaw says. “It’s eaten as a roadside snack with tea. It’s kind of like an energy burst because it does have caffeine. But here we add a little twist, and it goes well with the baby kale.”

Teni East Kitchen first opened on Broadway near 40th Street in Oakland in 2016. Credit: Tovin Lapan/East Bay Nosh

Shibabaw finds many parallels between Burmese food and the food of her homeland.

“Burmese food and Southwest Asian food in general have so much overlap with Ethiopian food,” she says. “The cooking style is a little different, they infuse oil with spices and herbs. But the spices are similar.”

In addition to a larger kitchen, Teni East Kitchen’s new space will have about 30 more seats (maybe leading to shorter lines!), an outdoor patio, and an adjoining public parking lot. 

“I’m excited to be able to serve customers in the patio/outdoor space,” Shibabaw says. 

And the additional space for a grill and that crucial steamer will allow the restaurant to grow its catering and events business. 

Teni East Kitchen is expected to move into the old Pomella space on Piedmont Avenue in March 2026. Credit: Tovin Lapan/East Bay Nosh

“It will allow us to do something more than what we are doing now,” Shibabaw says.

Meanwhile, Teni East’s sister restaurant, Aman café, which features a comforting menu of sweet and savory roti along with noodles and rice bowls, will remain in the same spot on Broadway. 

Check the Teni East Kitchen website for up-to-date information about the restaurant’s move and new menu items.

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