What seemed to be a doomed complex of rubble-filled rooms and temporary food stalls is now bustling with bars and restaurants—that’s right, downtown Yangon’s Urban Asia Centre is finally finding its feet.
One of the new eateries, Annam Noodle Bar and Bites, promises authentic Saigon fare, so we brought along Jade Myar, a Vietnam native who has been yearning for her country's cuisine throughout her three years working in Yangon.
“The coffee is quite similar to what you get on the streets of Saigon,” Jade says, sipping on a glass of dark roasted coffee, ice and sweetened condensed milk (2,500 kyats).
So far so good, but bigger tests lay ahead.
A bowl of bun thit nuong lands on our table—cold vermicelli noodles with grilled pork, fresh herbs and salad.
The restaurant claims to marinate the pork in a “secret family recipe” and it seems to do the trick.
“It’s better than other Vietnamese restaurants in Yangon,” says Jade. “This meat has been properly grilled, other places use colouring to make it look more grilled.”
Annam, the old colonial word for Vietnam, is a simply decorated place with conical hats and ceramic bowls stuck on the walls.
Jade sits underneath these hats and bowls as she offers perhaps her strongest compliment of the meal.
“If it was in Vietnam, this bun thit nuong would be acceptable.”
We also order chicken with rice (6,000 kyats) and a pork banh mi, or baguette (3,800 kyats), but, at only a few weeks old, Annam has neither available. Pho, the national dish, is not featured at all on the menu—a dissapointing absence for Jade, who says every Vietnamese restaurant should serve it or at least a wider selection of noodle soups.
Next up is the com thit nuong (6,000 kyats)—the same grilled pork, which taste good, but this time with rice.
“It should be broken rice,” says Jade, referring to the rice grains that fracture during the milling—once consider “poor people’s rice” but now ubiquitous in Ho Chi Minh City.
“But the rice here is big and soft. It must be very difficult to find that kind of rice outside Vietnam.”
The dish does come with an enjoyable slice of cha trung, which is ground pork and egg steamed in a pot of water and looks a bit like quiche.
Each dish comes with a bowl of herby soup and for 1,200 kyats you can get a glass of refreshing iced green tea, or tra da as they say in Vietnam.
Jade sets her eyes on the prawn rice-paper spring rolls full of carrots, lettuce and cucumber as well as a couple of small prawns (2,800 kyats for two rolls).
The peanut dipping sauce is rich and flavourful; it passes the test, but the rolls “taste like a veggie option,” says Jade. “You can barely taste the prawn.”
Annam has a chance to claw it back with its cha gio—ground pork wrapped in rice paper and deep-fried. Served with a sweet dipping sauce, it’s one of the few dishes on the southern-focused menu that’s enjoyed throughout Vietnam.
But Jade’s face drops, she sighs like she wants to offer praise but just can’t.
“It’s like they were frozen and then just fried on site,” she ponders, adding that every Vietnamese fried spring roll she has eaten in Yangon taste like it was bought in the supermarket.
The chicken fried rice doesn’t fare much better. Fried rice is fried rice wherever you are in Southeast Asia, but because this is a Vietnamese restaurant in Yangon, they can charge 5,500 kyats for a standard-size serving, says Jade.
Yet Annam must be doing something right—mainly the pork—as Jade considers her lunch for a moment and says: “I would come here against, but I’d stick to the grilled meat and coffee.”
Address: G55 Urban Asia Center, corner of 48th Street and Maha Bandula Road, Yangon
Contact: 09 261 083 196
Open: 9am-10pm every day
All Myanmar Mix restaurant reviews are done impartially and independently.
