Bagan Restaurants

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They quickly filled up with a myriad of small plates and bowls of all of the local specialties, with an emphasis on curries (some delicious, a few an acquired taste, but none modified for Western palates).All this for the princely sum of 3,500 kyat per person ($4).

Favorite Dish: The place is run by a very nice family and serves wholesome Myanmar food. I ate there first time during my recent stay in Bagan and was greeted like a long lost relative every time. I did have a couple of dishes that were just OK, but most of what I ate was very good and outstanding value. The other restaurants close by are probably pretty good, but this one is special.

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Located directly across from the museum in old bagan. Simple local restaurant serving fresh food in abunance. Not your style if you are looking for airconditioning, but they make an attempt to keep you cool by waving a fan for you during you meal. Will walk out of here stuffed and will not put a dent in your wallet. Spent 1600 kyat (~under 2USD) and got soup, 2 large vegetable dishes, and fruit. Have veg/non veg meals in simple burmese curries. Brother/Sister owners speak good english and are a joy to talk with. Came back 3 days in a row and was usually filled with locals dining.

Favorite Dish: Pumpkin curry was great. Fresh started with a whole pumpkin and ended up in my stomach 15 mins later.

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On my search for local beertasting I tried Mandalay beer, the regular blue one and the red one, which is a little bit stronger with some 7%. Both are not bad, the same for Dagon, which was very good, but I couldnt get it in bottles. Still the best one according to my experience is the Myanmar beer.

Traditional Burmese dishes go by several plates with a little bit of everything. Here you see a chicken dish with severl kinds of vegetables and soup with different spices. All you can eat rice is the rule, free tea always goes with it. Prices vary, this one goes up to 1000 Kyats.

We wandered into this little restaurant, which was just across the road from the national museum, just as the power went off! No problem - we were treated to the most amazing food feast! I have no idea what percentage of the meal we paid for - but it was certainly not all the dishes brought to our table. We were not able to eat half of it.

When we arrived at the restaurant, the only son of the owners joined up for a chat and brush up of his English - which was, needless to say, far superior to our Myanmar! He was a nice little boy, who was about 10 years old, and a very active part of the business when he wasn't at school. We ended up giving him our little dotti light - which brought on even better service - as he needed to run off and do every little thing with the light!

Apart from the additional food we were given, the mum and dad joined up for a while, and we were presented with "gifts" of some lacquerware items!

While we were here, a young tourist arrived, who was a "regular" patron, visiting for a special birthday meal - including a cake!

Favorite Dish: Pumpkin curry.

Its actually very easy to find vegetarian restaurants in Myanmar. This lovely little find was a clean side of the road restaurant, where the menu was both comprehensive and appealing.

We had been "escorted" to this restaurant by a small child hanging around our hotel. However, it was in our viewfinder for the evening, and he did not ask us for any payment. I suspected that the husband of the owner was one of the horse and buggy drivers who operated from outside our hotel.

The service was excellent, although a staff member from the next restaurant come over to try to sell us some of his paintings. This required firm assertion, as he was not to be deterred from his sales and personal misery pitch!

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During our second day we decided to break our sightseeing tour for a snack but we ended up having an excellent lunch in this tranquil restaurant. Green Elephant lies in New Bagan by the banks of river Ayeyarwaddy.
The service is excellent, the setting tranquil with views over the river and the food we had simply delicious. Specially we ate the best vegetable noodles during our whole trip. For a meal with noodles for 2, salad, 2 meat dishes (small portions) we paid around 7euros!!
Strongly recommended (a touch of affordable luxury!!)

Sarabha II (to disitinguish from no I) is an upmarket restaurant near to Old Bagan. We got recommendations about it from our guide so we decided to take our dinner there by the end of a long day sightseeing.
There is an extensive menu, expect to pay about 3$ each main dish, the ambience is good as well as the service. After 8 o'clock there is an additional marionettes' show.
My onnly problem was that every dish I chose had run out (at least their Thai mains with coconut milk) so we both choose Burmese.
Neither cold nor hot feelings about it. It depends if you fancy nice restaurants only.