Chickpea Tofu and Pickled Tea Leaves: Myanmar's Unreal Cuisine, and Why It's So Hard to Find

all right if I asked you to name a Thai Dish like first thing you think of on the spot go what just popped into your head all right now how about something Chinese what about Indian now what about something Burmese anything have you ever thought about how strange it is that the place literally in the middle of those other three iconic food cultures is a total plank spot on the map now I'm a chef and I've lived in a bordering country for more than 12 years and it still never really occurred to me how insane it was that I don't know anything about Burmese food at least until I stumbled into the wrong Street card and had one of the most incredible meals of my life it turns out somehow totally under the radar there's an entire Burmese subculture here in Thailand thousands upon thousands of immigrants and refugees building their own Community where some of the best food in Asia is in the back alleys of almost every district and neighborhood just right there hiding in plain sight so today we're on a mission to figure out what is Burmese food where can we find it and why did it completely disappear from The Culinary map [Music] thank you the place where I first had my reality turned upside down is here at this humble Street card in bangkok's Little India this is a place we come a lot for I mean Indian food it's a Punjabi neighborhood and maybe the best place in the city for Rich North Indian curries and of course our favorite Masala tea but off in the corner there was always a crowd around this counter so one day when there were two empty seats we sat down it's not often I try something that's nothing like anything I've ever tasted before but here it happened twice in the same meal there was this Le pet toke a salad of crispy split peas fried garlic Sesame and fermented tea leaves this was just a shocking amount of flavor sour and salty and packed with textural contrasts and in any other situation it would have been the highlight of my week to discover it if it weren't for the next dish which was this sticky flat noodles covered in a rich gravy of chickpea and turmeric packed with seasoning and flavor and just a touch of jaggery for sweetness this is the most comforting of comfort foods and honestly a Pantheon dish up there with almost anything else I've ever eaten here in Southeast Asia it made no sense to me how I'd never seen tried or imagined these dishes before and that's just one single Street cart how much more must be out there hiding in plain sight and how is it possible that all this Burmese food is so completely unknown now I don't want this to be a story about War I mean those are basically the only stories anyone ever sees about Myanmar I want to talk about food and dishes like this but to understand how this unique culture formed and why you know all about Pad Thai but maybe nothing about mohinga we have to at least acknowledge the elephant in the room for the sake of this story I'm gonna skip about 4 000 years of history and pick things up in the 1940s the British have been kicked out after a generation of colonial destruction and the Japanese have fled after crushing the British and killing a couple hundred thousand Burmese civilians as collateral damage the new country is on a knife's edge I mean before the English arrived and Drew their own borders by gunpoint this was still a place where various ethnic groups had their own kingdoms and where throughout the centuries power had waxed and waned between Buddhist and Hindu and Muslim leaders Chinese and Mongol Indians Siamese and the ethnic man anyway in the first few years after the end of colonial rule Burma did pretty well in fact for a time in the 1950s it was probably the most promising post-colonial country in all of Southeast Asia but again these were borders drawn by the British and some ethnic groups felt marginalized in the new country and pushed for Independence and that gained momentum in the democratic system so in 1962 in the name of nationalism the military seized power in a coup dissolved the elected government and stifled any notion of regional Independence the country fell into sectarian violence widespread oppression and massive corruption and since I'm really not trying to make this a story about war we'll just simplify it to say that that never stopped the chaos touched off in 1962 has only continued to spiral into war and poverty all of that is to say that while over the last 50 years the rest of the world discovered the paradise of Southeast Asia and dishes like pho and laksa and Pad Thai started to spread Burmese food was locked behind closed borders and all of its Secrets stayed hidden but hidden is a relative term between two and three million refugees and immigrants from Myanmar are in Thailand right now and in Bangkok the city where I live as many as one out of every 15 people here is a migrant from Myanmar about 45 minutes west of downtown in an area called ekachai well that's where most of those migrants start their new lives on this side of the Border it's a district mostly unknown and a place even most local ties have never heard of before but this specifically the bangbon market is the center of central Thailand's Burmese Refugee population and that is where we went to start our journey as a guide and translator I brought along a friend who happens to be a well-known Burmese chef from Yangon who's also coming to this market for the first time how do I say thank you in Burmese [Music] [Applause] okay what do we have right so I actually prepared a plate for you I I kind of pointed out which one to have so this is um beef stew with Roselle and bamboo shoot stir fries this is um one of my favorite dishes as well and it's uniquely for me so you have to try it and this is mohenga this is my favorite all-time favorite breakfast dish same thing yes so you have to try this this is um yeah this is like your go-to dish this is um The Unofficial national dish of Myanmar [Music] you know Thailand I love Thai food obviously so do I the flavor profile tends to lean towards a balance of let's say sour and sweet this leans towards a balance of sour and salty I would say the sweetness is definitely toned down and compared to what you'd expect from like a Thai curry and that's as you said the absence of coconut milk if there's I don't know if there's there's sugar but there's not much if there is probably not at all yeah no you don't use sugar in not cooking I mean if anything at all it would be MSG but our dishes are approved more Savory and salty a bit spicy maybe in certain regions and um hour but certainly not sugar not sweet absolutely mind-blowing how good that is [Music] can you actually help me to order a second plate just like this with them do you want beef and the yeah because I'm gonna just eat this this is me this is like is that good it's that good I mean yeah I could eat this it's just so different from Thai food right like Savory salty sour foreign along with snacks and prepared food here at the bangbong market gugu pointed out to us some other things that made her feel like she'd just stepped back into Yangon there's this a traditional Myanmar version of a shampoo made with the kinpoint fruit the bark of the gruya tree and lime used widely in the country for more than two thousand years and then there's this kunya in Myanmar Beetle nut in the west ubiquitous in the country Beetle leaves brushed with slaked lime and mixed with oreganuts anise seed and cardamom this is the stuff that's chewed which gives a mild caffeine pop and a mouthful of red spit [Music] [Music] four years ago Pew or Google as she's known by everyone owned a PR agency in Yangon her Focus was promoting the country's best restaurants and f b venues and she was at the top of her industry in Myanmar but then came another wave of war and crisis and in the middle of civil collapse most restaurants aren't looking for public relations so gugu left for Thailand where she realized that maybe her clients didn't need her help but her country did encouraged by fellow refugees and local chefs in Bangkok gugu embarked on a mission to bring Burmese food to the outside world she began to host pop-ups and cooking classes to raise awareness of her country's Cuisine here in Bangkok and then she pushed farther abroad Singapore and Hong Kong Sweden Italy and multiple events in France it became an all-consuming mission for gugu to show the world that there was more to her country than violence and strife there was also a Cuisine that by All rights deserves its own spot among the world's true culinary Giants tell me a little bit before we stop talking and start eating about food diplomacy what you do right because what what I'm bringing up and the reason why I talk about the public perception of Myanmar is you are actively trying to change that this is what your mission is so tell me about your idea of spreading I guess diplomacy for Myanmar through food well I mean I feel that we're forgotten well we it seems like were invisible almost I've had incidents where if I tell them where I'm from whether I say I'm from Burma or Myanmar they never know where where this country is and we're not even a small country and then only when I tell them why it's actually right next to Thailand and then between and bordering China and Laos and Bangladesh then they vagvally know where it is but um we're pretty much invisible and it's that and also another reason is because our Cuisine is actually very palatable and diverse and I really wish that people know a bit more because um everyone knows about Thai food everyone knows about Vietnamese foods Laos lounge and food just not Burmese food thank you [Music] it's really good it's real it's really really good [Music] foreign [Music] cooking I mean it was mainly in Europe and I've had people very very emotional because it felt it took them back to Myanmar and that's when I know I'm doing I'm I'm on the right path and I've had in Italy for example in Toronto it was room for their people and I cooked and I served and then I came in and then there was a they everyone stood up and then just clapped and they were very very emotional I was involved I was very very emotional because you know they were they said I mean with the current political situation they couldn't go back and then it felt like they were still part of Myanmar and they took them right back to the time so that's when I knew I'm doing an okay thing in 2016 after Decades of struggle in turmoil Myanmar citizens finally forced open elections for the first time since before the coup a non-military government was voted into power and the country began to liberalize a second round of Elections were held in 2020 in which the party representing the old dictatorship won only 33 seats out of 476. this was followed by celebration and hope and then in the middle of the night on February 1st 2021 another coup elected officials were thrown in jail tens of thousands of activists were executed what should have been a high point on me and Mars road to Freedom instead saw the country plunged to a new low there is no silver lining in a situation with so much death and Devastation but in a morbid and twisted way the brutality of the present crisis might be what finally brings Burmese food to the outside world because now it's not just political refugees fleeing its successful business owners pulling up stakes and starting again outside like the owners of this place which just opened in Bangkok a few weeks ago brought us here before she bit us farewell and it happens to be right downtown near my house it's on sukumvit 21 in an area called asoc this place is brand new but for the owners it's just another start for a business that's beloved at home before the coup this family owned a chain of noodle shops and tea houses throughout Shan state in Northeast Myanmar and while I wish this place never had to open here I mean okay maybe there is a tiny Silver Lining at least for the new customers like me who'd never tried Shan noodles before and are now exposed to one of the world's great everyday meals [Music] it's amazing this is so good so yeah what's your goal tell me 10 years from now what do you want to be not just you personally doing but what would you like to see in terms of the global recognition of your food I I won't everyone to know what though is I want everyone to know what Moringa is and um noodles is because those are my top three favorite dishes so yes in a way for selfish reasons as well every time I travel somewhere I don't want to have to cook for myself I want to just walk into a restaurant and Order foreign so that that would be that would be my dream [Music] just a little bit further from downtown there's a neighborhood called pratunan an old business district now famous for textile factories and electronics markets and a place where slowly perhaps the world's first little Myanmar is starting to take shape like gugu giving up her PR firm to learn how to cook here the Burmese food is being spread by people like the managers of this restaurant who back home were a banker and a zoologist this is called The Mandalay food house and it's as much a community center as a restaurant is every day the restaurant serves hundreds of meals to Burmese of all backgrounds because somehow in a country geographically larger than France or Spain with Coastal lowlands and jungle covered mountains with Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists and with so much history of war and tension the food is pretty much the great equalizer from north to south the distance farther than New York to Cuba nearly everyone in Myanmar starts their day with a bowl of mohingya and probably has a grandmother making her own pickled tea leaves for LA peptoque and maybe one day it'll be easier for us to find that stuff too [Music] [Music] um foreign last year with the business taking off the Mandalay Food House expanded to a second location then a third all along this same alley it's this neighborhood brought to Nam where Burmese living and working in Bangkok have started to build something of a home base and not just with necessity shops in a market but with trendy cafes just like along the streets of Yangon a sense of normalcy something that must be nice for all the people who are here but would really like to be home most of the business in this area is meant to serve as the Burmese population but there's one restaurant that's turned their attention outward for the last few years keliana has earned a reputation among immigrants here as bangkok's best Burmese restaurant it was a pretty tiny place just a few tables but with high quality food and a well-respected chef but a few months back the owner had an inspiration the place next door closed and they decided to try to remodel and Rebrand and to see if they might become the first Burmese restaurant ever at least in Thailand to scale up and reach a wider audience the new kalyana the one intended to appeal to the rest of Bangkok opened at the beginning of the winter from the upstairs bar to the decorative touches to the incredible menu with regional sets and original Burmese inspired dishes they got all the details right and it was packed at 3 30 in the afternoon on a weekday packed with Thai and Chinese customers and by five we had to be gone because their dinner reservations were fully booked I guess the secret to getting people to like this forgotten Cuisine is getting them to try it it seems as simple as that it's a terrible fluke of timing that after 4 000 years of history and centuries is one of the world's great culinary melting pots just as exotic Cuisine started to pinball around the world a time that should have been a showcase for Burmese traditions the country all but fell off the map but whether it's through the work of someone like gugu pushing Burmese Cuisine to a worldwide audience one person at a time or maybe some of myanmar's best chefs who find themselves abroad in serving their traditional recipes to a new audience or forward-thinking entrepreneurs risking their business to reach a wider following sooner or later this story will be told and in the meantime if you're ever in a busy and affluent area and you see a crowd of workers around a humble Street cart off in the corner somewhere don't think twice just grab that first open stool because if you're lucky it might just open up an entire world you didn't even know existed subscribe to the channel for more from OTR find bonus content on the patreon and please don't forget to check out our website and Instagram linked below and follow gugu on her social media too we'll have the link in the description box because there's a good chance she's coming to somewhere near you foreign racing already so much more intense than get some mild caffeine right it's a stimulant so it's like concentrated coffee

Channel: OTR Food & History

Views: 493,174

Keywords: otr, OTR, street food, thailand, thai food, burmese food, burma, myanmar food, myanmar, laphet thoke, tofu, southeast asia, burmese culture

Id: tuoNvzSltmI

Length: 23min 47sec (1427 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 31 2023