| rev:text
| - Stumbled into Little Rangoon while looking for a parking spot for another restaurant and decided as we had never experienced Burmese cuisine before that we would try this place, mind you we love Gujarati, South Indian, Korean, Thai, Szechuan, and Hunan cooking. We stayed away from the menu items that are obviously there to satisfy the less adventurous and aimed at what we thought were the more traditional Burmese dishes. Our meal started with us sharing the Green Tea Salad - which to this day, even after eating this awesome dish dozens of times, is still a favorite. The marinated green tea, crunchy garlic slices, crunchy yellow peas, peanuts, and smoked dried shrimp are all hand carried by friends and family out of Burma. These are added to thin sliced cabbage, tomato, some lemon, oil, and - if you request it, boiled egg. So while this dish may appear pricey, considering its origins and the rarity of these ingredients in the United States, we are quite lucky to be able to sample this delicacy. Try Green Tea Salad with a side of rice for a complete meal.
My wife asked for the Spinach and Marinated Bamboo Shoots for her entree and was asked if she knew if that was what she really wanted as this is typically an acquired taste. The smell of the marinated bamboo shoots is not for everyone, but my wife is never one to shy away from a food challenge, she loved it and has ordered it a couple of times since then. I ordered the Pork Belly Curry served in a homemade tomato based savory curry I have enjoyed ever since (this curry is used as a base for many of the curry dishes). For dessert it was our lucky day as Elizabeth, the owner, had made her and her workers a special Sanwin Makin or semolina cake with durian (normally it is made with raisins) - delicious, but an acquired taste for us Americans. This must be the easiest way to try durian for the first time as its notorious smell is hard to detect in the cake, not that this was our first time experiencing this pungent king of fruits.
On subsequent visits we have been treated to most every Burmese dish on the menu, including a number of items not on the menu. One of my personal favorites which they have on offer from time to time is the Butternut Squash and Fish Curry. Another favorite but not for the weak of palate due to its astronomic spice levels is a simple preparation of sliced onion with salt, oil, lemon, and enough roasted chilie flakes to camouflage the onions. It sounds simple but the combination comes together to deliver something awesome - this spicy onion salad is more typically a food eaten by rural Burmese. The Pig Ear Salad (not on the menu) was challenging but we were both thrilled at the opportunity to try it.
Something you must try is the Tobu Salad, and no, this is not a spelling mistake, I did not mean tofu. Tobu is a yellow split pea based kind of tofu that is sliced and mixed into a large salad which is one of my wife's and my favorite dishes here. She also loves the Moh Hinga. This soup is one of the most traditional of all Burmese dishes. Moh Hinga is made of cat fish and rice noodles, garnished with cilantro, and on request served with sides of lemon juice, chili flakes, boiled egg, and crunchy yellow peas which you can mix into the soup to your own taste. There are many more authentic Burmese dishes on the menu but if you only try what might already be familiar to you, you will not have mustered the courage to try something new and wonderful.
Little Rangoon, like nearly all restaurants in the Phoenix / Scottsdale area this year finds themselves at times in the doldrums waiting for a customer but they are surviving so if you find the restaurant devoid of diners don't let that disuade you from dipping your toe into the Taste of Burma. One more thing, the FALOODA. Oh My God, the falooda for dessert: vanilla ice-cream, egg custard, boba (tapioca pearls), thin agar noodles, and rose syrup milk is a treat that only a fool would pass up. I live for Falooda.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)