Who is James Cheese? A western pilgrim who first brought cheese to the shores of Korea? Is it, perhaps a cryptic reference to our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ? One thing is clear: James Cheese is a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a frankly disturbing amount of cheese.
Practically speaking, James Cheese is a restaurant that combines Korean BBQ with cheese. It might not seem like culinary dynamite, but the chain has spread from Korea to Thailand and now Yangon’s Bahan township. Our intrepid Myanmar Mix team set out to see what the hype was about.
The JC lobby is a hyper-yellow hotel foyer, a dimensional gate to the cheesy kingdom within. We took our seats, and, feeling the 37 degree heat, requested a glass of cool water from the 17 staff clustered around our table.
Only small bottled water was available, and when the glasses came, one was encrusted with some form of cheese detritus. The red “slushy” we ordered was essentially a glass of sugared ice cubes served with two plastic straws, in which a single strawberry floated sadly. An ominous start to our meal.
In Google translate English, the menu assures you that there is "No Need Fly Korea" to try the cheese rib combination that has made James Cheese such a hit.
Whoever James Cheese is, it’s clear he is not a native English speaker. We picked out a selection of dishes—half a rack of Korean ribs (served with cheese, sweetcorn, omelette and macaroni pasta, and costing a cool 21,000 kyats), macaroni minced chicken and cheese (6,500 kyats), and the intriguing “Korean lasagna” (9,500 kyats).
Minutes later, a large plate covered in waxy looking cheese was placed before us, and the hot plate was switched on. Everything looked either beige, orange or pale yellow, like the colour palette of a Mad Max movie. Gloomily, we nibbled on the watery, flavourless macaroni. The Korean lasagna, despite its impressive, mayo-drenched presentation, was rubbery and unpleasant. James Cheese would live or die on its signature BBQ cheese ribs.
The assistant watched us carefully as the cheese began to bubble and melt, searching for signs of arousal on our pale foreign faces. When the moment was right, she swooped in and draped a rib in folds of cheese, then triumphantly presented us each with one.
Ribs don’t really have much meat on them. Eating a single rib wrapped in an insane amount of cheese is really similar to just, well, eating an insane amount of cheese. And herein lies the problem with James Cheese—the cheese. It is not any particular type of cheese. It is just cheese, an insipid substance, a platonic idea of cheese without any of the things that make cheese actually enjoyable to eat.
We finished the meal with the “James Waffle” (4,000 kyats), canned cream and plastic-tub ice cream spooned over a half-decent waffle.
Let me be clear: James Cheese is western food as conceived by a psychopath, a post-modern mess of disparate elements, an affront to body and soul. How best, then, to understand the appeal?
Just as a Brit might “oo” and “ahh” as the chef delivers their tandoori naan, or an American might clap their hands as the lid is taken off their “Chinese” orange chicken, so it might be that a Korean family gasps with joy as they spoon mounds of cheese into their mouths.
And yes, cheese twirling around a rib like candyfloss is a gimmick that promises big exposure on Yangonites’ Instagram stories, and will probably provide fun and amusement to groups of friends searching for something different from the standard fare.
Final note: This review would be incomplete without a word about the playlist we encountered at JC, which included Linkin Park, Evanescence and The Godfather theme. James Cheese, hats off.
All Myanmar Mix restaurant reviews are done impartially and independently.
Address: 26, Sayar San Road, Bahan township, Yangon
Contact: 09796051982
Open: 11am-10pm
