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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