Burmese food @ Mandalay

I recently moved to Edgware Road area. Apart from the annoyance of packing and unpacking, I'm very excited to explore the variety of food offered in this area as where I lived before, choices mean choosing between McD, KFC, Subway or the pubs (yes I'm talking about Paddington!).

My first on the list is Mandalay, the only Burmese restaurant in London as I read so many good reviews about it and a friend of mine just came back from Myanmar and she was impressed with the cuisine. So on a rainy Monday night, me and my bf decided to check out the place, conveniently 5 mins walking down the road for us. The place is tiny, probably with capacity of 20 people. We arrived at 6.30ish, there were already few people there and the 'reserved' signs were placed on the big tables. I read that the owner is Burmese but the waiter who served us is Bengali, as he was friendly approaching my boyfriend by the language. He told my bf that the food is very similar to Bengali and I also read that Burmese cuisine is the fusion of South and South East Asian cuisines due to its geography so we had a rough idea of what to expect.

For starter, we ordered the egg and potatoes samosas and a platter of vegetable fritters which came with three sauces. I heard good reviews about the fritter and they were decent but the batter doesn't feel fresh and crunchy enough. I've tasted better fritters before. We moved to the main courses of lamb curry with potatoes (KYET-THA & AH-LOO) for my bf and coconut& chicken noodle (KYET-THA OHN-NO KHAUK-SWE) for me. The portion of the curry is relatively small. It was decent, I know you think I'm running out of vocabulary but I can't find anything special or distinctive about this dish. It tastes like a normal curry you'd have in any Indian/ Bengali restaurant. Definitely, not as tasty as the lamb curry in Tayabbs (White Chapel) or my bf's mum's curry. My noodle, well, tastes funny. The texture of the soup is very creamy; with coconut flavour, it tastes more like a Thai curry. The chicken meat is a bit bland and lacks seasoning. I ended up swapping my noodle for my bf's curry. Unimpressed with the starter and main courses, I decided not to try the dessert.

I left Mandalay with disappointment as I couldn't form an idea about Burmese cuisine or point my finger to a distinctive taste or flavour. Maybe I'm the only one who has negative review about this place as I've only come across good reviews of it or perhaps because I entered Mandalay with high expectation from all the hype?

On the good side, the waiters were very attentive and the food is reasonably priced.

I have to stress that I'm not a food critique by any means, what you read here is my personal experience and preference only. If you love to explore new things, give it a try but maybe don't set the expectation too high ;)