Jonathan Gold Talks Burmese Cooking at Silver Lake's Hip New Daw Yee Myanmar

This week, Jonathan Gold heads out to Silver Lake to review Daw Yee Myanmar, the hip Burmese restaurant that followed in the footsteps of the original Monterey Park restaurant of the same name.

The Goldster compares it to the "hip Hollywood Thai restaurants in the mid-1980s, when people ate mee grob instead of boat noodles and the music industry seemed to be nourished solely with chicken coconut soup and cocaine," except Daw Yee Myanmar "shares its mini-mall with the Bar Method instead of an aerobics studio, and instead of drugs, you can smuggle in Brain Dust and activated cashews from the Moon Juice next door."

The Times critic describes Delyn Chow's cooking as "for the most part just right" with "the low-tide funkiness somewhat subdued:"

You can't have a Burmese restaurant without mohinga, the catfish chowder often thought to be the national dish, and Chow's version is almost delicate, spiked with slithery rice noodles and garnished with a big, crisp lentil cracker that melts into the chickpea-thickened soup. There is a salad of fat, chewy rice noodles tossed with curried chicken and dried shrimp, and a salad of wheat noodles with curried chicken and sour tamarind. You won't find the tangy, chickpea-intensive Shan noodles that make it onto so many Burmese menus — you'll have to go to the Monterey Park restaurant or to Golden Owl in La Puente for that — but the kyae oh noodles, with garlic oil, fish ball, ground pork and mustard greens, are not equivalent, but good. [LAT]

J. Gold concludes by recommending the stuffed platha, ginger salad, Kachin-style salmon belly, and tapioca cake.