Cheap Eats 2007: Mandalay

Reviewed by Cynthia Hacinli , Michele Kayal , Todd Kliman , Ann Limpert , Don Rockwell

Mandalay Restaurant & Café

930 Bonifant St.
Silver Spring/Takoma Park, MD
Phone: 301-585-0500

Cuisines:
Burmese, Vegetarian/Vegan

Opening Hours:

Wheelchair Accessible:
Yes

Nearby Metro Stops:
Silver Spring

Price Range:
Inexpensive

Dress:
Informal

Noise Level:
Chatty

Reservations:
Not needed

Special Features:
Kid Friendly

Website:
Click here to open in new window.

Best Dishes
Crisp, deep-fried fritters of Asian squash; a salad of shredded ginger, yellow peas, and carrots (with or without the addition of fish sauce); an earthier salad featuring fermented tea leaves; sliced pork with sour mustard greens; LetThoke Sone, which combines four styles of noodles; and ShweJi, a cake of Cream of Wheat, coconut, and milk.

Price Details:
Appetizers $4 to $7; entrées $8 to $11


Thursday is a good day to head to this sprawling Burmese eatery. You beat the weekend crowds, and it’s the only day you can get ohnhta min, a dish of pure comfort that brings together coconut rice and tender chicken-on-the-bone in a fragrant onion curry.

There are myriad other attractions on Mandalay’s lengthy menu. Salads are a mainstay, and while cabbage, onion, shredded carrots, fried onions, and a chili-flecked sweet-spicy dressing are recurring motifs, the variations can be striking. Baya Gyaw Thoke features yellow split-pea fritters (Burma’s answer to the crouton), which amplify the crunch of the cabbage.

A toothsome pork-and-mango curry, along with a medley of chicken and crushed peanuts scented with lemon and soy and dabbed with sesame-seed sauce, are as bright as they are hearty. Shweji, a coconuty cream-of-wheat cake studded with raisins, is a keeper and even better with a scoop of house-made coconut-milk ice cream.

Open daily for lunch and dinner.