Eating in Rakhine State

I ate well in Rakhine State. This was a pleasant surprise, as I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. The state’s location in Myanmar’s far west, along the border with Bangladesh, suggests a South Indian Influence. And a long-standing Muslim population seems to indicate dishes with a halal bias.

But the food in Rakhine State proved to be distinctly, well, Rakhine.

My first experience with the local food was with rakhine monti, Rakhine-style noodles. The state’s most famous culinary export (it’s available at stalls and restaurants across Myanmar), it’s a simple but satisfying bowl that combines fish from the state’s waters, and rice from its fields:

In this case the fish is the basis of the broth, which in the better versions of the dish is somewhat thick and positively spicy from the addition of pepper. Flaked fish also garnishes the dish, along with optional toppings of fish cakes, deep-fried lentil fritters, fresh and/or deep-fried shallots and a drizzle of turmeric oil. Condiments include slices of lime and without fail, a bowl of spicy green chilies, roasted and pounded into a rough paste with salt — a dish much like the northern Thai nam phrik num.

Rice is the main ingredient in the noodles, which are made via a laborious, multi-day process that appears to be the same as that which goes into making Thai khanom jeen. I got to witness the process first-hand at Mahin Kyi village, at the edge of the historical city of Mrauk U.

After soaking, grounding and pounding the rice, which, incidentally, is harvested from fields next door to ancient ruins:

the noodles are squeezed into boiling water and served fresh:

I was told that the noodles made in Mrauk U are the best; ‘They’re thinner,’ my translator explained. ‘In Sittwe they like thick noodles.’

Rakhine monti wasn’t the only dish that included nga yoke thi chik, the pounded chili condiment; it showed up in every subsequent Rakhine-style curry meal as a side. It was extremely spicy, and was served coupled with a few slices of cucumber, par-boiled greens and almost without exception, the crunchy, fragrant blossom of the galangal root:

I found many of the dishes in Rakhine state quite spicy — a noteworthy contrast with the predominately savoury, mild dishes of central Myanmar. The tart dishes were distinctly tart, and salty dishes were salty — a full-flavoured approach to cooking that, in many ways, has a lot in common with Thai- and Lao-style cooking.

Perhaps this was due to the fact that the Rakhine, like the Thai and Lao, have a seemingly vast repertoire of ingredients to choose from:

Mrauk U’s morning market was really one of the most exotic markets I’d been in Southeast Asia, and had a huge array of produce I’d never seen elsewhere, such as ta pyu thi:

a softball-sized fruit that the locals boiled until it disintegrated into a thick, sour soup, often supplemented with tiny fresh shrimp.

Particularly popular during the rainy season was ta nyin thi:

hard pods known in English as dogfruit and locally as anyaw thi. The pungent fruit is boiled until tender and served dipped in oil seasoned with a bit of salt, as part of a curry meal.

The wet weather also meant lots of fern fronds and bamboo:

Yet even during the dry season, Rakhine State is a wet place, with lots of rivers and access to the sea:

Sittwe, the state capital, which is located on an island, is also a port with a busy fish market:

Fish curries were a staple in every curry restaurant I visited in Rakhine State, and in Sittwe I had a particularly tasty one featuring huge squares of fatty, gelatinous stingray.

But perhaps the best meal I had in Rakhine State was the one prepared by my guide’s wife. I don’t have any photos of the meal, but it spanned a rich, oily chicken curry; an intensely smokey/spicy ‘salad’ of grilled and pounded eggplant; a broth made tart with young tamarind leaves; a vegetable stir-fry; and of course, that spicy chili paste.

If you’re visiting Rakhine State and require a guide who happens to have a wife who is a talented cook, consider Sittwe-based Naing Naing (+959421746111, mr.theinnaing.f4@gmail.com).

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Not quite eating local in Kayah State

On my last couple trips to Myanmar, I’ve been fortunate enough to visit some destinations that were new to me, and some that are more or less new to tourism. Kayah State happened to be both of these.

Myanmar’s smallest state, Kayah State hugs the Thai border in the country’s east. For decades, much of the state was a battleground between the Burmese army and the military wing of the Karenni National Progressive Party. Foreigners have been visiting the area for a while, but only on government-sanctioned group tours, and only then when things were quiet. Today, with a ceasefire signed and fighting relegated to the past, parts of Kayah State have been officially designated ‘open’ by Myanmar’s central government, and for the first time, independent tourists are allowed to visit. I’d never been to Kayah State, and was excited about the prospect of visiting an ‘untouched’ destination, and perhaps even encountering some food that was new to me.

Undoubtedly Kayah State’s biggest tourist draw is the Kayan. Known in English as ‘longnecks’ and in Burmese as Padaung (actually a Shan term meaning ‘wearing gold’ — a moniker generally considered pejorative by the Kayan), the tribe is best known for the women’s habit of wearing stacks of brass rings around their necks. Over time, the rings lower the women’s collarbones and ribcage, making their necks appear unusually long. A common myth claims that if the coils are removed, the women’s necks will fall over and the women will suffocate. In fact the women attach and remove the coils at will and there is no evidence that this deformation impairs their health at all.

A few local guides are trying to re-establish the tourist trail to Kayan villages, and with them I went to Rangkhu, allegedly the largest Kayan village in the state.

We drove about an hour south of Loikaw, the capital of Kayah State, through a savagely deforested landscape of spiky hills. Kayan villages in Thailand have been compared to human zoos, and there are allegations that Kayan women are used to draw tourists at Inle Lake, but there was nothing touristy about Rangkhu. It’s a poor, relatively featureless place, whose inhabitants seemed mildly bewildered to see us. Only a handful of tourists have passed through the village in the previous decade, and foreign tourists haven’t been allowed to stay overnight in Rangkhu since 1996.

Upon arriving, we were told that a local woman had been ill for a few months without any sign of improving. Although the majority of the Kayan have adopted Christianity, some are still animists, and in an effort to help the woman, the villagers had killed a pig and two chickens and were making a stew-like dish, which along with rice and some rice alcohol, the village shaman would offer to the spirits:

It was generous offering for a group of people who didn’t appear to have much.

After the food was prepared, a tiny portion was put in a couple bamboo tubes. The shaman walked to a nearby hillside:

unceremoniously deposited the offerings on a rock, and left.

That was about as close as I got to local food in Kayah State. After asking around in Loikaw, I was told that the only local dish available in the town’s restaurants was something called hin htoke.

Served at a tiny housefront restaurant called Mingala, hin htoke takes the form of a rice flour batter seasoned with herbs, topped with meat (pork or chicken), wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed:

It was a simple but delicious dish, particularly when served the Burmese way, with a squeeze of lime and a drizzle of spicy chili oil.

Except that it wasn’t exactly local; I was told later that hin htoke actually has little to do with Kayah State, and is associated with the Intha, a group of people who live near Inle Lake, in neighbouring Shan State.

So perhaps I didn’t get to experience local food in Kayah State, but to be honest, if I hadn’t been told, I probably wouldn’t have noticed.

Mingala Hin Htoke
Kant Kaw Rd, Loikaw
9am-6pm

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Three noodles worth eating in Lampang

Lampang, in northern Thailand, is home to chaam traa kai (?????????), Thailand’s emblematic ‘chicken bowls’:

so perhaps it’s not surprising that I encountered some good noodle dishes there. Actually, exceptional is more accurate; I’d say that each of the below is among the best version of the dish I’ve encountered just about anywhere in the country.

The noodle I keep on my radar when up north is khao soi, the dish of wheat-and-egg noodles in a curry broth.

and with the help of food-based pamphlet printed by Lampang’s tourism board (???????????: Food You’ll Like), I was pointed in the direction of Omar.

At a glance, the bowls here — served with smooth, pale noodles and a garnish of coconut cream — call to mind the Muslim version of the dish. Indeed, Omar is located in a neighbourhood with a mosque and several Muslim restaurants. But there’s pork on the menu, and a taste reveals that the khao soi here is much meatier than your typically mild Muslim version. I ordered the beef, which is easily among the richest and meatiest bowls of khao soi I’ve ever eaten. There’s very little dried spice flavour, but a teaspoon of phrik phao, the condiment of chili flakes fried in oil, made up for this.

Also noteworthy was the way the dish was made. Rather than combine the curry paste, meat and coconut milk in a single broth as many shops do, the cook here started out with a thick, almost stew-like broth of beef and curry paste. To order, scoops of the beefy/spicy stew liquid and a much lighter chicken broth were combined in a bowl, and the lot was garnished with a ladleful of coconut cream. Despite the potential for things to go wrong, the elements blended perfectly, making what must be one of the tastiest bowls of khao soi in the north.

Khao Soi Omar/???????????
Th Suksawat, Lampang
8am-3pm

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One doesn’t have to look particularly hard to find khanom jeen nam ngiaw, fresh rice noodles topped with a pork and tomato mixture, as the dish is available just about everywhere in northern Thailand. But it’s rare to find a version that’s this exceptional.

I think it’s fair to say that the nam ngiaw served at Paa Bun Sri is so smokey they should consider calling it a grilled dish. This is a relic of the days when chilies — in this case those employed in the dish’s curry paste — were dried via the smoke from a hearth. This assertive smokiness was just barely countered by the tartness of tomatoes, and smoothed out by a couple chunks of rib and several cubes of blood. An intriguing bowl of noodles with a lot of delicious, disparate things going on.

Paa Bun Sri/?????????
Th Talad Gao, Lampang
8.30am-4pm

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Phat Thai is a dish that I rarely, if ever, seek out. In general, I tend to find it a bit gloopy and heavy, and up north, as mentioned previously, they do a few things — namely adding pork — that would arguably make the dish even heavier. But somehow, it works.

A standard order of phat Thai at Yay Fong, a street stall near Wat Suan Dok, arrives wrapped in a thin omelet. Inside, you’ll find a tangle of rice noodles that, in addition to the usual phat Thai ingredients — tofu, salted radish, dried shrimp, garlic chives — includes minced pork and pork rinds.  To counter this, the seasoning was just slightly sweet with a bit of tamarind sourness. The dish had a slightly smoky flavour (it was fried in a small wok rather than on the flat round surface that many vendors use) and came served with garlic chives and sprouts and, unusually, a couple leaves of lettuce.

It’s a meaty, moreish (I ate two dishes) phat Thai that’s definitely worth seeking out.

Phat Thai Yay Fong/????????????
Th Boonyawat, Lampang
5-10pm

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The perils (and benefits) of eating on the job

My day job is writing guidebooks for Lonely Planet. I enjoy what I do, but writing about holiday destinations can, at times, feel a bit frivolous. It can also be rather frustrating.

Specifically, if you’re as interested in local food as I am, slogging through the eating selections of Thailand’s more popular tourist destinations can be a pretty discouraging experience. Pai, in Mae Hong Son, northern Thailand, is a good example of this. Despite being located in a province that’s home to a very unique and delicious cuisine, the restaurants in town serve very few local dishes, instead proffering a bland melange meant to appeal to food-wary western backpackers and urban middle class Thais alike. In doing research for the current edition of Lonely Planet Thailand, I subjected myself to bad burgers, poor pastries, sub-par Vietnamese, heavy-handed (and overpriced) southern Thai and bland central Thai, among other things. I eventually found a couple local places serving local dishes, but the bulk of Pai’s food had little or nothing to do with Mae Hong Son or northern Thailand.

In the end, the only genuinely recommendable restaurant that stood out in my mind was Larp Khom Huay Poo, a place just outside town serving excellent northern-style laap and other largely meaty, local dishes. At the time, I was fully aware that it’s not the type of place that is going to appeal to everybody (offal and blood feature in just about every dish, and there’s no English-language menu). But partially out of frustration, and partially out of a desire to encourage people to try local food (not to mention the fact that it’s a very good restaurant), I decided to give it top billing in my writeup, sticking it with an ‘Our Choice’ icon and describing it as “…the best meal in Pai.”

Fast-forward a year and I’m back in Pai, investigating new places, but really I’m just waiting for the chance to eat at Larp Khom Huay Poo. Two days and several mediocre meals later (why must all meals in Pai come served with ‘French fried’?), I can’t stand it any longer and decide to go to the restaurant. Upon arriving, I am struck by a new sign, gloriously illuminated (with glowing Coke logo) and sporting Roman script. Inside, the dining room has been upgraded and re-arranged, leaving it much more open and approachable than previously. And perhaps most conspicuously, there is a large, English-language menu posted on the wall. I can’t imagine that the descriptions, derived from heavy-handed transliterations such as ‘yang room’ (actually yaang ruam: mixed grilled meat) and ‘rince’ (pork rinds), would be of too much help for foreign diners, but at least there are pictures to fall back on.

Reassuringly, I was greeted by the same friendly owner, who recognised me from my many previous visits, but I remained a bit bewildered by and sceptical of the changes. Could I have gentrified or perhaps even spoiled a good restaurant by recommending it? While I was thinking about this, a young, backpackery, European couple arrived. “We read about this place in the Lonely Planet,” they informed us. I was suddenly face to face with the cumulative effect of what I’d done: foreign tourists were actually, literally eating at this local laap shack because of my recommendation, and this appears to have had a significant impact on the restaurant.

I was beginning to reconsider my original intentions, but any fears I held vanished as soon as dinner arrived. For me at least, Larp Khom Huay Poo continues to serve what are the archetypal versions of the northern-style laap and kaeng om (both pictured at the top of this post). The former is rich, fragrant and spicy, and the latter is meaty, herbal, thick and warming. Coupled with sticky rice, pork rinds, bitter greens and a bottle of Singha, it was easily one of the most delicious and satisfying meals I’ve ever eaten.

Before leaving, I asked the owner if she’d noticed more foreign diners over the last year. She said that she had — “every day” — and that she’d noticed many of them carrying the same book. I told her that I was the one who wrote the listing, and asked if she was comfortable with being included. “Of course,” she glowed, “I like foreign customers, they’re much easier to deal with than Thais,” referring to visitors from Chiang Mai and Bangkok, who according to her, sometimes sent back food that they weren’t familiar with. She explained that business had been good, and that she’d used the profits to improve the restaurant. She was obviously happy with the situation, and asked if I had any suggestions for her. I thought for a second, and requested that she not change her dishes to suit foreign diners; reducing the chili heat a bit was OK, I offered, but I urged her not to compromise her recipes or ingredients.

Her friend — incidentally, the man who’d translated the menu into English — thanked me for supporting the restaurant, and generously paid for my meal, and I left Larp Khom Huay Poo feeling honoured, satisfied, and perhaps most importantly, distinctly un-frivolous.

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Eating sakura (cherry blossoms and leaves) article in the Japan Times

My latest article in The Japan Times is about edible cherry blossoms and leaves. Japanese people love the cherry tree so much that not only do they eagerly look forward to their all too short flowering season each spring, they use the whole plant. They eat the berries of course later on (cherries are called sakuranbo and are in season in June and July) but they also eat the blossoms and the leaves, pickling them in salt and umeboshi vinegar (a by-product of making umeboshi). The wood is used for various things too, as well as the bark. See how sakura bark strips are used in the making of magewappa (bent wood) bento boxes here on JustBento. The bark is also boiled and used as a medicinal tea.

Some photos that didn’t get into the article below.

This is how salted/pickled sakura leaves and flowers are typically sold. The flat package contains leaves, and the jar has flowers. You can find them in well stocked supermarkets or in department store food halls in Japan around this time of the year.

Closeup of some cherry blossoms straight out of the jar. As you can see they are quite salty, so for most uses you need to soak them in water for a bit. But for sakurayu or sakura tea, just put a blossom or two in a cup of hot water. The ‘tea’ is salty and sour with a subtle fragrance.

The easiest way to enjoy the taste of sakura in Japan is via wagashi (traditional Japanese sweets). This is a sakuramochi - an an (sweet bean paste) filled mochi cake wrapped in a sakura leaf. The salty-sour taste of the leaf is a perfect foil to the sweetness of the cake inside.

Here’s another kind of sakuramochi; the mochi cake is made of Doumyouji rice, which is medium grain instead of short grain.

How the sakuramochi looks inside. It’s a nice couple of bites.

This is a sakura manjuu. The filling is an again, but the dough is different from mochi (but still made with rice). The top is decorated with sakura flavored salt. You can also find sakura manjuu with a salted cherry blossom on top.

Finally here is a sakura-flower shaped nerikiri, a delicate confection made just from smooth an. Beautiful, isn’t it? It doesn’t actually taste like sakura, unlike the more rustic sakura mochi and sakura manjuu, but it’s meant to enjoy the season via the eyes. This one is from Kagizen Yoshifuka, a famous old tea room in Kyoto that I have written about previously a couple of times.

You can also buy seasonal sakura flavored candies, chocolates and the like but to be honest, most of these are pretty but just taste like sugar.

I have noticed that a lot of people (at least in my circles) are travelling to Japan this spring. This is a good thing. If you’re in Japan or planning to go there soon, enjoy the sakura season!

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Worth eating in Pai

The tiny town of Pai is one of northern Thailand’s most popular destinations. And understandably so: it’s laid-back, cheap and beautiful:

Unfortunately - at least if you travel to eat - there are very few places to get local food. There’s some tasty Chinese food, innocuous and backpackerish Thai, and a couple OK places selling Israeli standards, but if you’re interested in trying northern- or Mae Hong Son-style eats, you’re pretty much limited to a handful of restaurants. Luckily, two of them are exceptional.

Laap Khom Huay Pu specialises in mostly meaty northern-style dishes such as laap khua and kaeng om (both pictured at the top of this post). The laap khua, northern-style fried laap, is probably my favourite version of the dish in Thailand, and successfully balances meaty, spicy and aromatic. The laap gets its dark colour from the addition of blood, and comes accompanied with a variety of fresh herbs, some spicy, some bitter, which change with the seasons. The kaeng om, a meat-and-offal-heavy soup, is almost curry-like in its thickness here, and is correspondingly rich and spicy, with tender bits of tendon, intestine, heart and liver.

Laap Khom Huay Pu
9am-6pm
Rte 1095 (the restaurant is on the road to Mae Hong Son, about 1km north of town, on the first corner after the turn-off to Belle Villa and Baan Krating), Pai

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Khanom Jeen Nang Yong, an open-air place in ‘downtown’ Pai, sells khanom jeen, thin rice noodles served with various curry-like toppings:

Particularly worth seeking out here is the khanom jeen nam ngiaw, a northern-style noodle soup with pork bones and tomatoes as its base. Again, quite possibly my favourite take on the dish, the broth here is dark, rich and spicy, and is even tastier when accompanied with the restaurant’s excellent pork rinds. There’s no English sign here - simply look for the clay pots that are set out in front of the shop every afternoon.

Khanom Jeen Nang Yong
Th Chaisongkhram (in the same building as Pai Adventure), Pai
Lunch & dinner

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If you have access to silverware and plates, you could always pick up to-go local eats at the town’s evening market - but at your own risk:

Pai’s evening market - a short, eminently walkable strip of road just outside of the centre of town - is the most annoying example I’ve encountered of people showing an extreme reluctance to disembark from their motorcycles to buy things, even if this meant blocking entire stalls, cutting off pedestrians (namely, me) and emitting exhaust and noise.

At least some folks still choose to walk:

although they appear to be limited to a particular demographic.

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Worth eating in Chiang Rai

Initially, I wasn’t too impressed by the restaurant spread in the northern city of Chiang Rai. But after several visits and an equal amount of days spent there, I eventually dug up a handful of good places to eat. So in addition to previously-mentioned restaurants Paa Suk and Lung Eed Locol Food, and the excellent coffee and Swedish pastries at BaanChvitMai, if you find yourself hungry and in Chiang Rai, I encourage you to consider the following:

Nam Ngiaw Pa Nuan:

which, in addition to a rich and delicious version of the eponymous northern Thai noodle dish, do an excellent som tam ponlamai (som tam made with mixed fruit) and a few tasty-looking Vietnamese dishes.

Nam Ngiaw Pa Nuan
Th Sanpanard, Chiang Rai
9am-5pm

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Pa Yai,

a Muslim restaurant outside of the city centre, does what were possibly the tastiest roti I’ve encountered in a very long time: puffy, light and crispy, with virtually no oily sogginess. Pa Yai also does a deliciously rich and fragrant beef curry and a slightly watery kaeng karee kai, Muslim-style chicken curry. Definitely worth the trip.

Roti Pa Yai
Th Aladin, Chiang Rai
053 718 446
6-10am & 3-10pm

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Phu-Lae:

is a longstanding restaurant that serves local-style food to Thai tourists. Not everything is great, and in general the restaurant serves a rather gentrified version of northern Thai food, but I like their kaeng hang lay (illustrated above), which is served with a generous amount of ginger and pickled garlic - both spicy, acidic foils to an otherwise rich and oily dish.

Phu-Lae
673/1 Th Thanalai, Chiang Rai
Lunch & dinner

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And finally, I really enjoyed Chiang Rai’s evening market:

which had some really tasty-looking northern-style eats. Unfortunately it was to-go only and I had neither plates nor silverware…

Cnr Th Uttarakit & Th Suk Sathit
5-9pm

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