Food

27 Jan:
Well....that previous entry sounded negative!  Since then the food has certainly been pretty consistently good.
Every hotel we've stayed in has had large included breakfasts.  Having to serve both Asian and Western tastes, they've done a good job at accommodating both.  Breakfasts are usually steam tables filled with rice and noodle dishes, soups, meat and vegie dishes, and condiments to suit them.  As well, there's always eggs, cooked various ways, often by request, toast,a couple of kind of fruit,  cereal and coffee (and even sometimes little sausages, which I've never taken advantage of).  In Bagan, the large breakfast tables were outside in their central garden, and even included brown bread and croissants.  Here in Hsipaw at Mr Charles Hotel,  my fave at breakfast are really nice thin pancakes, with real berry jam! (instead of the usual 'red' - a sweet 'jam' - found all over Asia).
Really popular are Thai and Chinese dishes.  Most restaurants or stalls seem to serve variants of these, and they're pretty consistently good and very reasonably priced.  Last night we had great plates of crispy duck and and mixed vegetables, with steamed rice, and came away pretty happy.
Today, in Hsipaw, on a walk around in the north of the town, we first stopped at a little Myanmar organic juice and snacks place - 'Mrs Popcorn', a widow (speaking good English) who started the little eatery at her home in a wonderful setting, all under large spreading shade trees.  Very chill and simple. You order a juice, and get savoury snacks and an orange with it. Then we stopped on the way back into town at a little Myanmar restaurant (Paul had struck up a short conversation with the owner on the way out of town). Just fabulous!  Paul had a full meal of a variety of meat and veg dishes, and I had an absolutely delicious Myanmar noodle soup, with chillies, lemon  and coriander condiments.    Incredible deal at 'Mrs Boads Myanmar Food Shop'.  Tonight we decide to eat at the restaurant here at Mr Charles, and Paul had a repeat of a really nice chicken meatball soup and I had this great and sloppy chicken and fried egg 'burger' (had to eat it with a knife & fork).
So....eating our way happily through Myanmar...



18 Jan:
One of the things I'm unhappy to admit is that food has not been much of a thrill here in general.  It's been mostly ok to 'meh'.  The stuff that is ok has been Thai or Chinese, but nothing that would really stand out.
Still, in Mawlamyine Paul had a great small Thai soup, and last night (in Pyay) we stopped in at what looked like more of a bar/restaurant (with the typical cooking grill with assorted choices of skewered meats to cook) and had  really excellent chicken satays, with all sorts of great tasting condiments, and a fried rice that actually wasn't swimming in oil.  The night before we stopped at a Halal open air take out place and bought some different Indian-type stuff (eggs in dough, samosas, etc).  We ate that in a nice little pagoda outside our room, but man was it all really greasy - too the point that (not to be gross) I ended up puking a bunch of it out later.
It seems that cooking oil is the great food lubricant, whether at street stalls or restaurants.  We've been staying in places that provide free breakfasts - some kind of eggs, white toast with 'red', fruit, then lots of 'dinner' foods to us - fried rices, fried noodles, noodle soups, etc.  In the west we eat oily foods sometimes too - mmmm...sausages - but not to the same degree I think.  Some has been just fine, but first thing in the morning is just not my style anyway.  But when we were in the large enclosed market in Pyay yesterday (a really fabulous labyrinth of small shops, much cleaner than the equivalents in India) and some shops had ranges of bread products, so Paul picked up a pack of mini-doughnuts.  Just great!!

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