Typical Myanmar Feast - Take 1 (by G)

Initially in the Began area I opted to stay in New Began - a small town with one sealed road and a disproportionate number of hotels, restaurants, money changers and tour agencies.  I didn't feel I had experienced much in the way of real Myanmar cuisine so far during my stay so when I saw what was advertised as an authentic Myanmar restaurant earlier in the day I decided to return there for dinner.

The place was deserted - it is a bit out of the way and not peak tourist season.  I ordered the 'Master Set' two curries with fixings. For the curries I chose Fish and Pork (I'd seen chickens scratching for food at the dump and it turned me of the bird for a while).

Shown below is a pork curry (not too bad), fish curry (excellent flavour but the fish was really flabby so I only ate the meaty bits), stir fried cabbage (okay), tomato curry (really salty), lentil curry (bland - like they'd opened a tin of lentils and poured it into a bowl, some fried chilli for seasoning, Not shown: a tomato salad (nothing special - tomatoes and lettuce on a plate) and vegetable sticks (carrot, cucumber, daikon and a few other vegetables cut into sticks).

I forgot that first off was a sour soup - it was okay but tasted a bit seweragey.  I was concerned for a while that it may have been made with tainted water but later decided it was probably the daikon chunks that made it taste that way.

The power went off twice while I was there (there had been 4 mini-blackouts earlier in the day) and at times I was eating by candle light - romantic maybe but not ideal in the 36 degree heat.

This meal was okay but left me thinking, 'Well, that's why you don't see too many Myanmarise restaurants about'.  I skipped out on dessert - which appeared to be frozen banana.

It was pretty cheap though:

Food: $4.50
Beer: $2.00
Water: $0.50 - that irritated me a bit because I didn't order it and I didn't drink it (but I damn well took it with me).