The Moon: Be Kind to Animals

The Moon opened in 2001 on the main road of Old Bagan, a few minutes' walk from the Ananda Temple, and has barely changed since — a shaded courtyard under a canopy of bougainvillea and tamarind trees, wooden tables on a brick floor, and a vegetarian menu that runs to about thirty Burmese dishes prepared without meat, fish or eggs. For two decades it has been the default lunch stop for temple-zone visitors and one of the few restaurants in Myanmar written into most guidebooks as a destination in itself.

The tea-leaf salad is the dish most people come for — the family prepares the fermented tea in-house and the salad arrives dry with the dressing on the side to be tossed at the table, a presentation most Burmese restaurants have abandoned. The pumpkin curry with tamarind and ginger is substantial; the Shan tofu salad with peanut oil and chilli flakes is particularly sharp; the mango salad is refreshed hourly through lunch service.

The setting is the real draw — the courtyard is one of the prettiest dining spaces in Bagan, and the afternoon light through the bougainvillea is genuinely photogenic. No alcohol is served (a matter of principle for the owners rather than licensing), but fresh lime juice, tamarind water, hibiscus tea, and Shan-grown coffee are all excellent.

Open daily for lunch and dinner; closes at 20:30. Cash only. Can be busy between 12:00 and 14:00 when the tour groups arrive — solo travellers and couples will find the room quieter either side of those windows.

The Moon is Bagan's solo-dining room. The courtyard seats solo travellers on small teak tables without any of the awkwardness that accompanies eating alone in the hotel restaurants; a book, a tea-leaf salad, a pumpkin curry and a lime juice is a complete Bagan sequence and costs under $10. For first dates, the setting is unusually romantic for the price point — request a tamarind-tree corner at sunset. Team dinners work on the larger courtyard tables (groups of 8 can be accommodated without notice).