As I mentioned in my review earlier this year of Friends Cafe in St. Paul, there is a sizable Burmese population in the Twin Cities, mostly of the Karen/K’nyaw ethnicity. However, as I also noted in that review, while K’nyaw people have opened restaurants in the Twin Cities—specifically in the East Metro—these have not centered their own cuisines in their menus. Friends Cafe’s menu is largely Thai and Karen Thai’s menu is even more so. Of course, Thailand adjoins much of Burma/Myanmar and is home to a large Burmese population. It has also been a way station for many of the K’nyaw people now in the US. And so it makes all kinds of sense for Burmese, K’nyaw and Thai food to mingle in restaurant menus in the US. Still, it’s always nice to see a less represented cuisine proclaim itself more confidently, as is the case with St. Paul’s Mandalay Kitchen. It is, I am pretty sure, the Twin Cities’s first formal restaurant to center Burmese food of any kind. They opened a little over a month ago in the old Marc Heu space on University Avenue in St. Paul. We finally ate there this past weekend. Here’s how it went.

(I should note here that while I am using “Burmese” and “Burmese food” as national identity markers, the actual history is more complicated and I do not mean to subsume K’nyaw identity and food into a general Burmese identity. You can read more about K’nyaw history here.)

The restaurant is an attractive space and the attractiveness begins on the outside with the beautiful mural on the side of the restaurant along Western Avenue. Pictured on the mural is a woman important to the restaurant, Grandma Daphne Tunbaw—you can read more about her inside. The dining room is nicely spaced with attractive tables and decor. There’s more seating upstairs, and I think our server said some of that space can be booked for larger groups—but don’t quote me on that.

Burma/Myanmar mostly sits between Northeast India to the west, Northwest Thailand and Laos to the south and east, and China’s Yunnan province to the east. The cuisines of the country as a whole are marked by those proximities, of peoples and cultures and ingredients. On Mandalay Kitchen’s menu you’ll see this marked mostly by the presence of Esaan and Lao-style dishes but they also serve samosas and on the weekends, chapli burgers. At our first meal there, however, we were interested mostly in the Burmese dishes. We were a party of six (four adults and our boys) and managed to sample a decent amount.

We did start with an order of Egg Rolls (with chicken) at the request of the younger boy. We also go the Fried Chicken Wings with a spicy laab dry rub, and the Burmese Stuffed Tofu. We’d also ordered the Bayar Kyaw (chickpea fritters) but, alas, they didn’t have them that day. All the appetizers were good with the perfectly fried chicken wings (conveniently, 6 to an order) the standout.

For the larger dishes we ordered the following: Lahpet Thoke, the classic Burmese tea leaf salad; their version of Mohinga, the classic Burmese fish-noodle soup/stew; Khauk Swe Thoke or noodle salad; and the Knyaw Pumpkin Curry. The boys split their Khao Mun Gai Tod, the Thai-style chicken-rice dish topped with crisply fried chicken. Once again, we liked everything, with the pumpkin curry the standout of this round. I will say that the food seemed to suffer a little more than our meal at Friends Cafe had from what is a common concession at local Southeast Asian restaurants to Minnesotan tastes: a little too much sweetness. Of course, extra heat can be added at the table via crushed chillies and chilli oil, but the extra sweetness is not possible to remove. The fermented tea leaf salad was likewise very tasty but the tea leaves got a little more lost than I would have liked in all the other greens in the salad. But, again, everything was very tasty.

For a look at the restaurant, the menu, and what we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down for thoughts on service, to see how much it all cost and to see what’s coming next.

We were the first table to be seated (several others were occupied by the time we left) and so were able to get recommendations from our server at leisure. We were a bit surprised by the order in which the food came out (and also the speed at which some of it came out). Though I’ve described what we ate above in the order they’re presented in on the menu, the slideshow depicts the actual order in which they came out. The lahpet thoke, mohinga, the curry and the khauk swe thoke came out first, and in very short order—the first two, almost immediately. After a while the three fried appetizers came out and the finally the khao mun gai tod. Which meant we were well into the heavier dishes before the appetizers got to us. Of course, they’ve only been open for a little over a month now—presumably this will all get sorted out.

Price? With a few soft drinks, tax and automatically added tip (for a group of six), the total came to just about $135. Counting the boys as one hungry adult, that was just about $27/head. That’s pretty good for the quality and quantity of the food. I’d recommend them. We’ll be back ourselves to try more of the menu—particularly their boat noodles and khao soi—but that won’t be till next spring when we’ll be back in Minnesota after a sojourn in India and South Korea. If you haven’t been yet, you should go much sooner than that.

Alright, up next from the Twin Cities will be another report from Restaurant Alma—the missus and I are scheduled to eat there this weekend. That’ll be posted next Tuesday. Before that I hope to put up another report each from Ireland and New York. Plus the regular whisky reviews.