Bagan

Shop 4, 41 The Boulevarde

Strathfield NSW 2135

Phone (02) 8746 0666

Bagan is apparently the only Burmese restaurant in Sydney (correct me if i'm wrong hehe). So when a good friend of mine wanted to take Richard & I here, i straight away checked my diary for the first availability :)

The name Bagan is named after an ancient city in Burma, and the country is bordered by China, Laos, Thailand, India & Bangladesh. You can see parts of these countries foods on the menu (which is picturised by the way, giving a new comer to eating Burmese food a little idea of what it will look like before ordering).

It is located far from the main centre of Strathfield (where all the restaurants are), and is across the road from an Indian Mart (i think). There is outdoor seating but it was a windy night so we opted for a table inside. The place was busy, with a group of young girls sitting behind us (i think it was someone's birthday cos i saw presents hehe).

We ordered a few small sized dishes, and two larger dishes. I had two guys with me, who were both hungry, and can eat a lot :)

Nungyi Thoke $5

This dish is a cold rice noodle salad, but tasted like pasta noodles. The noodles were thouroughly coated with a a cheesy parmesan-like dressing, very flavoury i really liked this dish - garnished with fresh coriander.

Burmese fried rice w/ chicken $9.50

Heavily garnished with fresh chilli - this fried rice was damn spicy. But Richard could handle it - he's the chilli eating king as far as i know. Fresh spring onions were also tossed through before serving. For $9.50 this rice dish is very reasonably priced, great value for money i'd say.

Century egg salad $5.50

This salad had a whole lot of Spanish onions in it, but i like onion so i didn't mind it. Also mixed with chunks of tomato, fresh chilli, this is the first time i've had century egg is a cold salad. Normally at home my mom cooks it in sweetened soy sauce & we eat it hot with rice. This was totally different, but still just as good.

Samosa Salad (vegetarian option) $5.50

This is probably my favourite dish. Small samosa's drenched in a mild yellow curry sauce, with thinly sliced cabbage strips. The samosa's on top were crisp, but the ones underneath were what i were going for, slightly soggy from the curry but still with some crisp to it, i really couldn't get enough of this dish.

Pan thay kaut sware $9.50

It's great they have picture menus, otherwise we would really have no clue of what each dish was. This one was fried egg noodles with curry chicken (also available in vegetarian) but i thought the boys might want a bit of meat in their dinner that night hehe. This dish was again mildly hot, & very saucy & flavorsome.

Basil seed drink $3.50

This is one of my favourite drinks. I love trying to bite the seeds, only to have the chewy skin around each seed - stop me from doing so.

We were still hungry for another dish, so ordered this

Kaw sware thoki $5

A cold egg noodle salad, with a great amount of fried onion bits on top - my favourite! They have these onion bits in mi-goreng packets- but its hardly enough i always pile more on top it's so unhealthy but i only eat mi-goreng a few times a year so i can splurge on the extra calories!

Ku fee

I'm not sure of the price, must be $4-$5. But it totally looked homemade. COndensed milk ice spiced with cardamom flavour. I wasn't impressed, as it was rock hard and so hard to cut through. Once it thawed a little, it was alright. WOuldn't of ordered this if the picture didn't make it look yummy.

Cheese cake

Again i didn't note down the price, but it seemed like another frozen desert it was really hard to cut through, like it was not quite defrosted yet.

Being the only Burmese place in Sydney to dine at, i'd imagine they'd get pretty busy on the weekends. Luckily though we were there on a Tuesday night.

The fusions of food really interested me, and i like it a lot more then just eating at a Thai, Indian or Chinese restaurant. Simple fusion food, with a cheap price tag, i'd love to take my friends back here, so we can order a lot more food to share around.