I've been craving Burmese food for the last ten years or so, ever since I got back from England. After I graduated from college, I worked in a pub in London for a while that was right around the corner from a spectacular Burmese restaurant called the Road to Mandalay. The fresh spicy food here was particularly welcome on my days off as a contrast to the deep-fried bland pub fare that constituted my regular diet at the time.
Ever since I abruptly left the country, I often think about how pleasant it is to hang out in a pub on a Sunday afternoon, or take a walk along the canals, or have mushrooms on toast for breakfast at that little cafe on Clifton Road, sip a really good pint, or not have a car, oh and the parks- spend time in a park, or enjoy a steaming eggplant hotpot at 2:00 AM in a packed second-floor dive overlooking London's cobbled Chinatown. But what really calls to me is the Burmese food. It just may be the perfect food. It's this wonderful culinary intersection at the junction of Indian cuisine and Thai. The apex of Southeast Asian cooking. And until now, I had not found any in Los Angeles.
But it's all my fault really. I whine and I long, and yet it has been sometime now that I have known about a Burmese restaurant in Whittier, The Golden Triangle, and not payed a visit. True, it is in Whittier. But on the quiet Sunday afternoon after Thanksgiving the trip's not long, and what else are you going to do? Cook? I don't think so. Plus, the food is definitely worth a little drive.
So Paul, Desmond, and I made our way up the 605 to the leafy downtown. Golden Triangle is on the central stretch of Greenleaf Avenue just down the street a bit from the movie theater, the Little Old Bookshop, an inviting bar, and a shop selling I Heart Whittier tote bags. It's a pleasant neighborhood to stroll off a big ol' Burmese lunch.
Arriving at the long flourescent lit, vinyl-boothed space, we carefully waded through the gigantic Thai-Burmese menu to put together a Vegan Burmese lunch. (By that I mean, it's not all vegan and it's not all Burmese, so read your menu carefully and/or ask questions. You didn't drive all this way for standard Thai fare or for little shrimps in your tofu salad.) We started with "Burmese Falafil" and that's the one dish that I would skip on my next visit. It was dry and deep-fried to a too-crisp cementy sort of consistency.
Everything else was excellent. We had the Homemade Yellow Tofu Salad which was my favorite dish. The main ingredient is bite size rectangles of Burmese tofu. It's not made with soy beans. From the little research I've done, it seems it's either made with yellow split peas or perhaps chickpea flour. It has a different texture and color than the tofu you're probably used to. It's a bit denser, a bit grainier, but that doesn't sound delicious, and it was. Along with the yellow tofu, the salad contains slivers of red onion, toasty brown crispy fried onion, fresh cilantro, and chili.
The "chef recommended" praram from the "Vegetables Lovers" section of the menu was also very good. Slices of fried tofu (the regular old soy bean kind) top soft sauteed spinach dressed with a peanut curry sauce. Those toasty fried onions garnish this dish as well, and I love the warm flavor that they impart.
Coconut rice accompanied these two dishes, and made a comforting contrast to the assertive flavors of the salad and the spinach. We finished our meal with crispy fried banana in coconut batter. It was delicious.
My hopes and expectations were high, and they were both met and exceeded. It was no Road to Mandalay, but it was its own delicious self. I will be back to eat my way through the rest of the salad menu. You'll know me by my I Heart Whittier tote bag.
