Little Myanmar. Mohinga. Myanmar.
Dish: 8/10
Would go back for it. Would travel to Myanmar for It.
Restaurant: 3/10
Hole in Wall basically and bogus points for K-Pop.
Mohinga is Myanmar’s national dish. The pleasure of this challenge is less in the completion of countries whose cuisines we are aware of, for which we often feel we are merely checking off a fairly mundane list, but more in the discovery of cuisines from countries we not only are not aware of, but have rarely spent any time thinking about. Such a country as this is Myanmar for us.
We visited Little Myanmar, a very small restaurant in the East Village, to grab some Mohinga on a hot day, for the World Restaurant Challenge.
Not Fishy
Mohinga is noodles in a savory fish based soup, and beyond that, like Pho and Ramen, there are lots of permutations and possibilities. Little Myanmar’s had little fishy fritters, egg, pieces of smoked fish, and probably some other things we couldn’t identify. We had never heard of Mohinga and were a little trepidatious, because fish stock can be a risk at the best of times. But boy - this was bizarrely delicious.
There is virtually no fish taste at all from the soup - just a solid background umami like mushroom soup - and in fact the most striking thing about the dish is the sense that it tastes a little like oatmeal. We couldn’t understand this while eating it, but later learned that either toasted ground rice, or a toasted flour is generally used to thicken the soup. It’s an umami-packed experience and one we will definitely plan on revisiting. I suspect that Little Myanmar’s Mohinga is the best in New York, especially because there are no other Burmese restaurants in New York, but even if there were, this is an exceptional plate of food.
Myanmar and Burmese Americans
Our awareness of Myanmar was and is faint and a little confusing. There’s a sense that there was British colonial brutality. There’s a sense that there was war there. And a junta. And a repressive regime perhaps. But it’s not the sort of history that we felt we could describe in clear sentences or references, or with any accuracy whatsoever, before we googled it after eating Mohonga.
It was, within our lifetime (though maybe not yours), known as Burma, and is still referred to by some people, including the United States State Department, as Burma, as are things from Myanmar referred to as ‘Burmese’. Because the people who renamed the country Myanmar were not universally popular, many people in the country still use Burma.
Burmese Americans were historically a pretty small population, but have increased substantially during the last 20 years. Apparently Fort Wayne, Indiana of all places has the highest concentration of Burmese Immigrants, which is the first thing we've ever heard about Fort Wayne that made us want to visit. Presumably it’s a great place to grab a bowl of Mohinga.
In recent years, Myanmar has made the news for the rise and then ouster of Aung San Suu Kyi, who has occasionally been portrayed as a potential savior for the nation, while also being condemned for her defence of Myanmar’s genocidal actions, especially against the Rohinga Muslims.
Little Myanmar
Little Myanmar is a tiny restaurant - less than 30 seats total in a narrow East Village space. On the day we went, we were the only people there and there seemed to be a total of two people working in the place, which was plenty. There was K-Pop playing on a TV on the wall, which was quite distracting. They opened the storefront here after a while of serving their grub in the Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Avenue/74th Street subway station.
So far, there are few dishes on this list that we would recommend as highly as Little Myanmar's Mohinga. Go there now. Or tomorrow. Whenever’s convenient.