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. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Twin Cities Burmese
Friends Cafe (St. Paul, MN)
Friends Cafe opened six years or so ago on Rice Street in that part of the Twin Cities metro where St. Paul, Roseville and Maplewood combine to create geographical confusion. It’s located in a large strip mall on the northwest side of the Rice and Larpenteur intersection but frankly, I’m not sure which city it is technically in. The restaurant’s menu says Roseville; Google and the restaurant’s check says St. Paul; meanwhile, a restaurant across the street is apparently in Maplewood. I will leave this to other people to sort out. What I can tell you for sure is that I deeply regret having let it fall off my radar before and during the pandemic, and that I am deeply grateful to longtime blog reader, Jim Grinsfelder for jogging my memory about it a couple of weeks ago. Yes, we finally made it out there for a meal and it was really very good. Herewith the details. Continue reading