Valencia Eats Throwback: Ma Khin Café
While I’m staying at home due to COVID-19, I’m going back through my archives and writing about places I should have written about long ago. This one comes from Spain; hoping the eatery and staff make it through this crisis.
Ma Khin Café was a restaurant I went to just a few times, but every time was like a nice little treat and retreat from the world. Part of that was due to stylish space hidden in the basement floor of the modernist Mercado Colón, below the bustling open-air eateries on the ground floor.
The restaurant used to have the unfortunate and nonsensical tagline “Colonial Asian Food” (see below), but perhaps someone alerted them to how horrible that sounds and now it’s called “Decolonial Asian Food,” whatever that means. Descriptors aside, Ma Khin Café takes you on a tour through Asia, especially Southeast Asia, but also makes stops in East Asia and the Indian Subcontinent as well. Though not always “authentic,” it always serves up beautifully presented, well-executed, and most importantly tasty dishes.
The chef Steve Anderson is partly Burmese, and all the way back in September of 2016, the restaurant held a “Burmese Week” with a special set menu. Because I’m writing this when so much time has passed, I’ll just describe the dishes, without much editorial!
First we had some shrimp fritters. Amazing how so many cultures have this, from various Asian cuisines to Andalucian.
For the starters, as shared small plates, there was the tea leaf salad (bottom left), eggplant and shallot salad (upper left), and “Kachin beef with herbs” in little rice cups.
They also served fish cakes with potato and rice, alongside a “balachan mayo” (according to Food Network, it’s “shrimp, sardines and other small salted fish that have been allowed to ferment in the sun until very pungent and odorous”).
Then there was a small individual portion Mohinga, the “Burmese national dish.” I’ve kind of made peace that no Mohinga will match my memory of eating Mohinga in Myanmar…
The second individual main dish was a pork belly with ginger, garlic, soy, and glutinous rice.
Dessert was a brûléed tapioca with lychee, rose water, and coconut.
All of this for 25€!
Ma Khin Café also has a weekday set menu. On this day in February 2019, we started out with some (shrimp?) chips.
Then there was a soup with what I think were little dumplings inside(?).
For shared starters, we had a cabbage salad with pomegranate and raisins, and vegetarian samosas.
For my main course, I chose a fried fish with spicy coconut sauce, served on rice with some herbs and shredded papaya. The other choice was a “Cantonese” pork rib.
Dessert was a chocolate cheesecake with ice cream on a bed of cookie crumbs.
At 17€, it was a bit much for our office’s weekly Friday lunch out (we usually spent no more than 10€ for lunch), but it was reasonable enough for an occasional treat.
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Ma Khin Café
Mercado Colón basement level
Calle de Jorge Juan 19,
46004 Valencia
Spain
