Marvelous Myanmar BBQ

So I struggle a little through Myanmar. The food is…well, how to explain?

In giant bowls, mystery meats float all day in deep, bronze-colored pools of oil. These bowls sit out in front of restaurants to entice customers. Oil purportedly preserves these staples in a country with no refrigeration. There is more oil than anything else, but there is not much choice, so we sit down to eat. Ladles full of this cold, oily curry are poured over mostly-cold rice that was prepared hours ago. Delightful: Cuisine Myanmar.

Okay, so that wasn’t so successful. But luckily, there are also noodle soups. For breakfast, that is. This could be delicious, right? But how do you even judge a fermented fish paste-flavored soup? I am at a loss. What I can say is that this delicacy is an eye-opener. Literally. The soup makes you feel really awake, really quickly. Works way better than coffee.

And the taste is so completely foreign that the whole flavor experience ignites a sort of existential vertigo in me. Just a spoonful in my mouth, and I am spun toward the outer limits of experience. Here, the distinctions of self or other, delicious or disgusting, swallow or vomit become dangerously blurred. It is one tremendous and terrifying instant of flavor. Perhaps by pure, random, lucky chance, that morning, I swallow, and the world seems to fall back into knowable and distinguishable categories. But I’ll never forget — it was touch and go there for a moment.

And then, a week or so before we head back to Bangkok, I finally find my hospice in Burmese cuisine. My respite is the traditional Burmese offals barbecue (or “awfuls”, as I would like to spell it). To me it is high cuisine, very avante-garde, sort of like fondue. And it’s everywhere. But you would have to see it to believe it. So, here’s a picture. (It would benefit you greatly to zoom in on this pic. Trust me.)

Marvelous Myanmar BBQ

Basically, all imaginable and unimaginable members of God’s colorful animal kingdom are cut into pieces and put on little skewers to be displayed around a bubbling pot of oily broth. It’s a carnival of body parts. It’s an anatomy lesson. Show and eat. Oh look! There’s a tongue. Various slices of the intestine make an appearance as soft, spiralled discs, as do pieces of rib, ear, liver, and heart. There’s even a chicken anus!

The skewers are seductively displayed in a semi-circle around the broth pot. Take a seat, grab the skewer of your choice, and plunge it into the pot. You should be a committed carnivore, but if you stick to the more ambiguous pieces of flesh, it is quite delicious. Really tasty. Honestly, I love it.

A Magnificent Man with a Magical Myanmar Milkshake!

I tell Ryan that the Burmese street-side BBQ has redeemed Myanmar food for me, and, understandably, he can’t stop laughing. To say such a thing is absurd. I mean, we are talking prickly, slightly furry pork-throat fondue, here. I guess it just goes to show how out of touch with “normal” you can get in Burma, and how, after a few weeks, you may well not be able to distinguish anymore between disgusting and delicious. It’s all just a matter of interpretation, a nebulous and ever-shifting point of view. Either way it’s a lot of fun.

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