Mandalay Restaurant, web site, 930 Bonifant Street, near Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring, MD, 301-585-0500 (Metro Trip Planner – opens in new window) [Washingtonian | WaPo | City Paper | food-plan | Citysearch | Gayot]
The best Burmese place around. Order many dishes and follow their lead. A superb restaurant. I’ve only been once, but I do not hesitate to put the place on my favorites list.
Links
TCEDG.com
Let me know what places
you recommend:
tcowen -at- gmu.edu
Photos to:
tcedgpics -at- gmail.com
If this is your first visit, read these:
-- Welcome
-- General Remarks
-- Six Rules for Dining Out
- Tyler Cowen's home page
- Marginal Revolution
- The Complete TCED Guide (June 2019) (127-page PDF)
- Metro Trip Planner
We really enjoyed our lunch there. They showed real attentiveness – for instance, when my bf asked for tofu in his noodle dish, they offered to make it without fish sauce and asked if he wanted his iced coffee made with soy.
Whatever you order, please order one of their salads. They are so good.
Whatever you do, order the cream of wheat dessert (ShweJi) after your meal! Although many times desserts fall flat in Asian restaurants for me, this one hits the spot after such a fiery hot meal.
I also thoroughly enjoyed my meal of pickled mango curry with chicken. The chicken was obviously dark meat and was very juicy and cooked well. And if you order your food spicy, be prepared. This place doesn’t mess around.
I’ve been eating here for years, going back to when it was in College Park shortly after they had stopped making doughnuts. It’s pretty much my favorite restaurant ever.
The salads are indeed amazing. I especially enjoy the gram fritter salad, the mango salad, the green papaya salad, and the seafood salad.
It’s hard for me to pass up the samosas. The sauce that comes with it will knock your socks off.
If you can go on a Thursday, I highly recommend the Thursday Special. The coconut rice is to die for, and the chicken, cooked slowly over many hours, will fall from the bone if you just introduce a fork to it. The Sunday Special is similar but has saffron rice and is just as good.
If you’re a little more adventurous (and who isn’t who reads this site?), try the room-temperature noodle dish Nanjee Thoke.
Mandalay is my go to for lazy days spent at AFI. But If I want the best Burmese I can find, Myanmar in Falls Church is the top pick (and it’s more convenient). Mandalay still has great service and the feel of home-style food, it just doesn’t knock anything out of the park and feels americanized by comparison. Also, they don’t have Shan tofu (chickpea tofu/hpu) on the menu. That’s an authentic experience I’ve only seen at Myanmar.