[mrgordon]

Really not sure what your point is here. Name cities in North America that have 10+ legitimate Burmese restaurants. If you want to try good Burmese food, it really helps to have local Burmese restaurants. The last time I was at a Burmese restaurant in San Francisco, the waitress told me a lot of the staff was in Burma for the month finding new flavors and ideas for recipes. In most cities there is no chance that the wait staff at your local ethnic restaurant is actively going back to Burma every year to get new recipes and ingredients.

Since you mentioned Vancouver, I searched for Burmese food on Yelp. Only 7 restaurants total come back total.

2 are "Burmese / Thai / Malaysian" Asian fusion places Three of 3 are a generic Asian chain called Noodlebox that has one item called "Burmese naan" 1 is a Thai restaurant with one "Burmese curry" dish 1 is a Vietnamese restaurant that mentions its near one of the Burmese / Thai / Malaysian fusion restaurants

So Yelp has 7 total Burmese restaurants in Vancouver, not one of them is actually Burmese, and almost all of them don't even have Burmese dishes (where is the tea leaf salad? Burmese naan doesn't count)

So you can act like San Francisco is just known for having a food scene, but when you don't even have access to many of the same world cuisines in other cities it is hard for me to take you seriously when you say its not a place for people who like "good food."

You know the majority of American produce is grown in California? Do the vegetables get better when they're shipped for a few days to the east coast?