Thargi Mohinga and Burmese Food

The perfect burmese food in new york. The service is also very good.

Thargyi has the best Burmese mohinga in NYC. It is a recently opened Burmese food stall in the newly renovated Hong Kong Food Court in Elmhurst, Queens.

As its name sake implies, Thargyi specializes in mohinga, the national dish of Myanmar— a hearty thick fish stew with rice noodles. Calling it soup doesn’t give it the credit it deserves. Imagine mohinga as a gumbo made of white flaky mild fish meat cooked down in a stock of lemongrass, ginger, and onions. This aromatic consommé is made golden from the yellow of spices like tumeric and gets its comforting depth when it is thickened with a nutty and smoky roux made of toasted chickpea flour and rice flour.

The mohinga is usually customized further by the diner — usually with a boiled egg, crunchy onions, crispy yellow spilt pea fritters, parsley, a squirt of zesty lemon juice, a dash of fish sauce, and as much toasted red chili flakes as you can handle.

Thargyi also offers other Myanmar foods as specials—mostly Burmese dishes like Dan bauk (Burmese biryani with chicken), curries, popular street food noodles, and regional & indigenous dishes from other Myanmar groups like Shan tofu salad. They also sell semolina pudding cakes (plain, banana, etc) for dessert. The specials are usually announced on their Facebook page.

Their chicken dan bauk (biryani) is also the best in NYC I have had. Their beef curry is okay— tender and good masala gravy but probably the second best Burmese beef curry in NYC next to Little Myanmar’s in Alphabet City.

Thargyi’s core customer base is the diaspora community so the food has to be the real deal— there’s tough competition from aunties (which is what you call all older women) who home cook and sell catered food.

My dad also told me that the chef used to be a very popular mohinga specialist in Myanmar. So it’s not their first rodeo in the food industry.

I’m expecting great things and new specials of hard-to-find and hard-to-make dishes once they settle in.