Review - Burma Restaurant

The reviews on the walls looked promising. Top 50, top 100, best bets and top cheap eats. Unfortunately, the reviews were ten and even fifteen years old - and after eating dinner at Burma Restaurant earlier tonight, I can see why no critic has been there since.

Steve, Agatha and I ended up at Burma because every other restaurant in Penn Quarter/Chinatown had a two week wait. I remember someone mentioning it at some point, and before you know it, I was hobbling up the steps into the restaurant.

I honestly hate to say this, but I can't think of anything good to say about this restaurant.

After walking upstairs and finding no host or hostess, Steve had to search the restaurant for someone to seat us. There were a couple people standing in the doorway waiting for someone to greet them - if it weren't for Steve, I'd still be standing there with them.

The decor of Burma resembles a elementary school cafeteria, right down to the clock on the wall made with novelty oversized pencils and the bright yellow paint on the walls.

But decor alone doesn't make for a bad experience. The service was downright horrible. It took Steve (again springing into action) to flag down the waitress after several attempts just to take our order.

Once our order was taken, our dishes all came out at different times, and was delivered to the wrong person each time.

I got a noodle soup with chicken and coconut cream - well, that's what I ordered. What I got was pretty much Campbell's chicken noodle soup with coconut milk.

Agatha got a split pea and onion soup that was gritty, though the taste wasn't bad.

The entrees weren't much better, in fact, they were worse.

I ordered a fish entree - fish tamerind (sp?). It sounded like a good idea - though not so much. The fish was overcooked, the sauce was grey and bland.

Thank goodness it came with a huge bowl of rice, because otherwise I'd be very hungry right now.

During the meal I asked for soy sauce to have with the rice - instead I got some sort of hot peppers. And instead of delivering Agatha the Diet Coke she ordered, a server plopped some chicken dish in front of us, and couldn't explain what it was.

Finally, when it was time for us to get the check, I actually had to walk up and demand the check from the server.

I've never written anything this negative in over two hundred posts, and I really hope I'll never have to again. It would serve Burma well to take the 1991 Washington Post review off of the wall and focus their efforts on 2007, or else there might not be a 2008.

Burma Restaurant
740 Sixth Street NW
Washington DC 20001
202.638.1280