Mandalay Morning Star Burmese Kitchen
🇲🇲 MYANMAR / A family from Mandalay and the restaurant they operated since 1995 have arrived in Covina and now offer their delicious Burmese foods.
🇲🇲 MYANMAR
📍 750 Terrado Plaza #33,
Covina, San Gabriel Valley.
🅿️ Ample parking in plaza
🥤 Beer and wine
What you will probably notice first upon entering Covina’s brand new Mandalay Morning Star is that the interior still has the bones of a Japanese restaurant. As you pass the new refrigerators full of prepared Burmese curries ready to purchase, you will see wooden pagoda detailing throughout. Although this is mostly used as a prep station now, you can even still sit at the sushi bar, next to which a tourist poster hangs on the wall featuring a kabuki actress.
Despite these mixed visual signals, if you use your other senses you will feel like you have been transported to Mandalay and the banks of the Irrawaddy River in northern Myanmar. Other tables all seem to be speaking to each other and the staff in Burmese, and the unique smells of the country’s cuisine fill the space.
Possibly as a nod to its two breakfast options, the restaurant opens at 10:00 daily, a bit ahead of most restaurants in the area that are not serving eggs and bacon. You can try both early morning noodle bowls, own no khao swè, a chicken in coconut-based curry dish, or mohinga ($12, above). The latter uses thin rice noodles in a thick broth of crushed rice, gram flour, and fish paste.
More than anything, this is the dish you will come back from trips to Myanmar craving. It is brewing in large pots on seemingly every corner in small towns and major cities, making your stomach rumble in anticipation from the moment you wake up each morning. The best stands are sold out before many tourists wake up, so you learn to adjust your schedule accordingly.
If there is a second dish that has made a name for itself outside of Myanmar, it is definitely the fermented tea leaf salad known as la phat thoke ($12, above). Peas and peanuts, toasted sesame, green tomatoes, lettuce, lemon, and crispy fried garlic all combine with the tea leaves to create not only a complex flavor, but one of the most complex texture palates in one dish.
If you are digging Burmese-style vegetable salads, dive further into the menu with a few options like this tomato salad ($12, below), which has some of the same characteristics but focuses on its namesake rather than tea leaves. A healthy blanket of toasted shallots and garlic finish off the dish, which is a bit spicy from chopped up birds eye chilies.
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