One of the most beloved dishes in Myanmar is lahpet thoke, or pickled tea leaf salad. Read my full post here: http://migrationology.com/2014/09/lahpet-thoke-myanmar-tea-leaf-salad/
The northern part of Myanmar is an area where tea originated - so it’s no wonder that tea plays a major part in the social culture of the country. But most of the time when you think about tea, you think of it only as a beverage, something to drink - and throughout most of the world, this is true. But in Myanmar, one of the most famous things to eat is actually tea, known as lahpet.
Laphet thoke is a very common dish throughout Myanmar, and the base and most important ingredient are pickled tea leaves. The leaves are mixed with tomatoes, and a few different other ingredients like toasted peas and nuts, and then mixed with a dressing made from peanut oil and a few seasoning light spices. The salad is extremely delicious, and the pickled tea leaves have a unique, slightly bitter, and slightly sour component to them, with a nice chewy texture. Laphet thoke makes a wonderful snack when you’re drinking tea too - so drinking tea and eating tea at the same time is delicious!
In Yangon you’ll be able to find laphet thoke, and it’s popular to eat at small street-side stands, but that being said, not all tea stalls serve it. You have to look for a stall that has a number of plastic tubs at the front, filled with all the ingredients used to prepare the tea leaf salad. If you see the plastic tubs, you’ll known they served lahpet thoke. Sit down on one of the miniature Myanmar plastic stools, order it, and you can sit and sip on tea while you wait for your salad to be mixed up.
When we made this video, I was in Yangon during the monsoon rainy season. It wasn’t raining when we sat down to eat, while I was eating, the rain all of a sudden started pouring down, and soon we had a small river flowing right through the street food stall - so we actually had to get up and stand so we wouldn’t float away! That’s part of the fun and excitement of eating street food in Myanmar. Along with the tea leaf salad, lahpet thoke, we also ordered a plate of gyin thoke, pickled ginger salad - another delicious salad especially if you love ginger.
Thank you very much for watching this video, hope you enjoyed it.
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I’m Mark Wiens, an eater at: http://migrationology.com/blog & http://www.eatingthaifood.com/blog/
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