Located in the trendy district of Nimman in Chiang Mai is Mango Tango – a restaurant who absolutely specialise in delivering the best in mango goodness to the people of Chiang Mai. Established in 2001 it has been serving some of the best mango Sticky rice in town ever since!
I found out about the place completely by chance – I was actually looking for somewhere to distract Sarah with while I slipped away to pick up her engagement ring. I had had it commissioned from an incredible designer called Boom to be picked up from her shop, The Metal Studio. Mango Tamgo just happened to be three doors up! I had actually spent the entire journey to the place praying that it would be good – it would have been too strange to drag her out of our way to a random part of town if it wasn’t. Fortunately the place was amazing.
When we arrived we could tell that there was a bit of a buzz about the place – there was already a queue by 12:30 – and it only opens at 11… They took our order while we waited and then assigned us our place number in the queue. The actual restaurant is very small so there is an outdoor waiting area – this was perfectly comfortable, and from here we got to admire the giant mango man mascot outside.
We ordered the mango sticky rice and a mango ice cream. When our number was called we were led in to our table – our food was then very promptly served. It seemed quite obvious that they aimed for a very quick turnover of tables here – quite understandably seeing how small they were inside and the size of the queue waiting outside. Unfortunately this meant I didn’t have a place I could leave Sarah for a few minutes while I mysteriously popped out!
I was desperately trying to think of alternatives, but then I started to taste the mango and sticky rice that was in front of me and I got completely distracted. The sticky rice with dried mung beans on top and the juiciest mango I have ever tasted stopped virtually every other thought in my head momentarily. It was delicious.
We didn’t take long in finishing our meals, wishing a little bit that we had more to eat but not fancying queueing again.
After the delicious food I was still stuck with the dilemma of how to distract Sarah for five minutes as I went to pick up the engagement ring. I went with the old “look over there for five minutes” trick as I slipped off – nailed it. We hopped in a tuk tuk back from Nimman, Sarah none the wiser that there was an engagement ring in my pocket. I was pleased that she had really enjoyed the trip out to Nimman and breathed a huge sigh of relief that Mango Tango had been such a perfect cover story for me! We ended up visiting Mango Tango again during our stay in Chiang Mai and I couldn’t recommend it highly enough.
By the way – she said yes.
the little BIG explorers 
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