When Pansuriya, the art gallery on Yangon’s Bo Galay Zay Street, opened last year, we didn’t know what to make of it.
Inside the high-ceilinged space were musty old photographs and black and white portraits and other items of historical interest that were fun to pick through but left the visitor with the impression of having walked through a really interesting storage locker.
The venue was the latest project of Aung Soe Min of Pansodan Gallery and Pansodan Scene, epicenters of the city’s arts and culture sets.
“Pansodan Gallery Owner Opens New Space Dedicated to Photography,” read our headline from July 2015.
The photos are still there, but the new incarnation of Pansuriya is more dedicated to food.
Really. Good. Food.
The gallery has recently been converted into a spiffy, full-fledged café cum restaurant, with elegant seating, friendly staff and a lengthy menu of affordable and scrumptious fare that’s heavy on Burmese curries and salads and Shan noodles.
If you like the better-known and more-established Rangoon Tea House, you’ll like this.
To kick things off we had two salads: tamarind leaf and fish cake (about $2 each), two offerings you don’t always see on menus with the expected tea leaf and pennywort varieties (they have those too).
The tamarind salad (pictured in the main photo) was fresh but lacked the spicy and zesty flavor of the fish cake.
For the main dish we split noodles with chickpeas, chicken sausage, bean sprouts, and egg. For about $2.50, it was a great bargain.
The bill, including a mint soda, came to just over $10. Not too bad for a filling meal in a comfortable setting.
After you eat, take a stroll around the gallery, which also sells some of the items on display (but you’ll have to ask, as it wasn’t really clear what was for sale and what was for keeps).
In short, highly recommended.
Pansuriya is located at 100 Bo Galay Zay Street, between Merchant and Mahabandoolah. This is what it looks like on the outside.
Reader Interactions