This morning, I went hunting for morels with my sister and her fiance. After an unsuccessful hour of sloshing through the wet and soggy woods, we decided to treat ourselves to lunch at Mahnin on Calhoun St.
My sister and I had both eaten there several times, but it was the first time for her fiance, Todd. Mahnin resembles nothing so much as a whole in the wall. It's tiny and shabby and the English on the menu seems to be an afterthought since most of the customers are Burmese. We were given small English menus to look over but it was hard not to feel jealous of the customers who could read Burmese as there was a white board mounted at the front of the restaurant written in Burmese that apparently had items on it not shared on the English menu. Several customers were enjoying dishes that didn't resemble any of the descriptions on my limited menu!
My husband took me to Mahnin for the first time and he told me that the cook/owner was a well renowned cook in her home country. One of the things I like about the restaurant is that although the menu is limited, if you describe for the server what you would like to eat, he'll go back in the kitchen and see if the cook has the ingredients to make it.
The menus that they gave us today had a few new items on them and I decided I wanted to try the sea bass in chili sauce. The server looked a little confused until I pointed to it on the menu and then he told me that they aren't quite prepared to serve that one yet! So I settled for some spicy noodles with pork and vegetables. I also ordered a spicy seafood salad to share among the table. Todd ordered some shrimp rolls for the table.
The appetizers were delicious! I'd had the seafood salad before. It had come highly recommended by my husband and it really is good. It has crab, squid, octopus, mango, mushrooms, onions, peppers, mint, cilantro, peanuts, cashews and some other Asian vegetables glistening brightly in a spicy dressing. The shrimp rolls were good also and had crab and shrimp wrapped in seaweed and then in spring roll wrappers and deep fried. They were served with two sauces; one sweet and one spicy.
The meals came with small cups of soup; clear broth with cellophane noodles and slivers of chicken. Todd told the server he wanted a soup with lots of stuff in it. The server brought him a bowl filled with seafood and vegetables in a spicy sour broth. My spicy noodles turned out to be big, thick rice noodles all gummy and delicious with loads of vegetables and pork.
The food was great, but the highlight for me was listening to Todd moan and groan in delight over his meal. He kept saying things like, "This is the BEST soup I have ever eaten!" and "oh wow! yum! mmmmmm.... these shrimp rolls are incredible."
Calhoun Street is my favorite street in Fort Wayne. It has several Asian markets within about a 6 block area. These little grocery stores carry all kinds of things that you can't find anywhere else; like whole red snapper, octopus, all kinds of seafood and sea vegetables, sauces and noodles (fresh, frozen, and dried), unusual produce, and frogs.....
While traditional grocery stores charge upwards of $2 for a small package of herbs, you can buy bags of fresh mint, basil, and fresh curry leaves for just pennies at an Asian grocery.
Also along Calhoun St. you'll find small, family owned ethnic restaurants serving food you can't get anywhere else in the city. There is Saigon, the Vietnamese restaurant whose speciality is big bowls of steaming noodle soups. There's Mahnin, serving Burmese, Thai and other Asian dishes. And there is a place called The Burmese Tea Room that serves curries and steaming pots of tea.
If you live in Fort Wayne and haven't visited Calhoun Street recently, you should make it a point to check things out!
By the way, while I was at Mahnin, I saw an announcement about an event at the Indiana Tech Cinema Center (on Washington Blvd.) tomorrow that I'm going to try and attend. There will be free Burmese-themed refreshments served during a pre-screening reception for "Burma VJ; reporting from a closed country." This film was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary in 2010. It was totally shot with hand held cameras that were then smuggled out of the country. After the movie there will be a discussion with a question and answer period. The object of the event is to educate the community on the Burmese living and working in our city. Fort Wayne is home to the largest population of Burmese living outside of Burma. For more information about the event, click this link.
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