Hi @Porthos,
While it might not look like much your description of Tea Leaf Lamb sounds wonderful! I must try this. 
i hope i don’t sound like a dick here, but when you say “spice level,”
are you referring to heat, as in hot, as in chile pepper spice?
i don’t recall burmese food being tremendously spicy in that way in general.
but i could just not be remembering correctly.
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Yes. The waitress specifically said at home they would add thai chile peppers to the salad.
The tea leaf lamb would not be spicy hot though even at home.
In the catfish dish I meant spice level as in flavor and seasoning but that dish was another dish that the waitress said they would add chile powder to at home.
thank you for indulging my soggy brain.
good info.
mohinga isn’t served spicy, even “at home”. you can hit all the backyard burmese moms and pops, and try all the vendors during Thingyan, not one will serve it “thai chile” hot. There will be chile amongst condiments, but the base catfish chowder soup won’t touch the level of “mild” at luv2eat.
this is not to say the particular waitress doesn’t eat her mohinga super spicy at home. maybe she does. shrug.
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Is it supposed to be a bit more fishy? It just tasted pretty bland.
I’ve never had Burmese food which is why I asked.
Some may say it is bland… But last time around, a tub of ngapi/kapi fish paste was brought out amongst the condiments for the mohinga… I declined. They (Burmese) eat it at 8am for breakfast, and a “basic bitch” bowl of mohinga is just about all I can handle even by brunch time.
how fishy do you like your avocado toast? 
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i found – generally, and it’s bad to generalise, i know – burmese food to be more funky than spicy. i remember eating some sesame-y, fishy-paste, which was delicious, and being warned not too eat to much as it would make me…how do i say this delicately…um, require fast and frequent use of the facilities.
What Tony said. My dad is from Burma and Burmese food is not supposed to be spicy. You might get fried red chilli flakes in oil to add to your mohinga or ohno khao swe, but the dishes themselves is not spicy. Mohinga is usually not “funky” either, but you add fish paste or fish sauce to it when you eat it (same with the ohno khao swe).
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i hope this isn’t rude and i don’t want to hijack the thread, but
may i ask what part of burma? just curious.
thanks, and it’s o.k. if you don’t feel like answering.
he’s the type of person that when you tells you he’s from burma, and you ask “what part?”, his response would be “all of me”.
Rangoon/Yangon. His one brother and his family still live there. Rest of his siblings left years ago.
Oddly enough, this sounds like something my dad would actually say!
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it’s so nice shecky greene’s child is on this board.
Time for some very old topic revival!
While many cuisines have certain locations around Greater Los Angeles that you can head to and find the tastiest versions clustered around each other, Burmese food has never worked quite that way. The vast region of the San Gabriel Valley might be the most dense with the food of Myanmar, but since Golden Owl closed, only three restaurants remain.
Culver City and Inglewood both have markets with some Burmese options, while Orange County has to rely on just one five year old full service restaurant to get its fix. Opened in early 2016 by an uncle and his nephew, the modest restaurant has the charm of the family business it is, and is respite from Stanton’s somewhat monotonous chain-heavy eats.
Stepping up to the menu outdoors, it is immediately obvious that the restaurant gets a vast majority of customers that know very little about Burmese food. The kind woman who was handling orders on this day offered her help if there were any questions. On this day it had been predetermined that the order would rely mostly on the fresh salads unique to Myanmar, often times called “thoke” on menus but here transliterated as “thote.”
Irrawaddy gets its name from the English of the Ayeyarwady River, which meanders its way from the north of the country, through the heart, and into the Andaman Sea. The menu at this restaurant with such a grand namesake includes most of the usual suspects in that category. Gin thote ($12, above bottom) is a salad of cabbage and shredded pickled ginger, tossed with tomatoes, peanuts, lentils, and chickpea powder.
Perennial favorite la phat thote ($12, above) is a similarly diverse array of textures and flavors, centering around the fermented tea leaves that give the dish its name. Irrawaddy does this especially well, using more of the tea leaves than normal and thus making a more bitter finished product than most restaurants. Extra crunch is in the form of fried bits of garlic as well as sesame and sunflower seeds.
Their tofu thote ($12, below) is also a winner, without the crunch but with a nice ladle of tamarind garlic sauce thrown on top. Burmese tofu is yellow because it is made with chickpea flour rather than soybean, which makes any dish using it take on this flavor as well rather than just the flavors of its other ingredients.
Thote dishes, all served room temperature and freshly mixed in front of you when ordered from vendors or restaurants in Myanmar, can be made with noodles as well. These dishes like nun gyi thote (translated as “southern noodles”) and kauk swear thote (“Mandalay noodles”) are available here and expected to be delicious. Unfortunately this order did not have room for them.
Noodles were enjoyed though, in the form of Myanmar’s morning favorite moh hinga ($12, below), a fish stew with rice vermicelli noodles. Even before the sun rises in Myanmar, you will find steaming pots of soup ready for people going off to work. The most popular of these is this dish, with a broth made from catfish yet never seeming fishy. The rice noodles instead grab their flavors from lemongrass, ginger, onions, and garlic, as well as many spices. Ask for some dried red pepper to add a nice kick to it, and give it a good squirt of lime. Crispy fritters and parsley adorn the top.
Anyone who has spent time in Myanmar will have most likely eaten plenty of egg curry, which seems to be the most popular type of curry. Often you will find plenty of okra in these, so here they have given the vegetable double billing. Egg with okra ($12, below) is a deeply savory and oily dish that begs to be spooned over jasmine rice.
It starts to give hints towards its South Asian roots, which play a large part in the cooking of the country today. British colonial rule had a lot to do with this, as many Indians from the subcontinent came during this period Burma was a province of British India as soldiers, civil servants, and workers.
Future visits to Irrawaddy will of course take in some of those noodle thote dishes, but also look to include meals from their “Home Cooking” section of the menu. Here there are many other curry dishes as well as masala and coconut-based treats.
Hopefully that will be very soon, safely in the confines of their hospitality.
Irrawaddy Taste of Burma, 7076 Katella Avenue, Stanton, Orange County 
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Fantastic report! I love Burmese food and it’s slim around here compared to the Bay Area. The hint that they have a “home cooking” section makes me interested in swinging by next time I’m down there.
If anyone isn’t near by like me, Burmese Please is doing their pop up again out of Crafted Kitchen next week–the order form goes live on their Instagram tonight:
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Very happy to see Irrawaddy get some recognition here
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