On Ethnic Cuisine and Memorable Meals

Learn Burmese from Natural Talk

Time to talk about food!

From Ramen bowls that rival the best in Tokyo to Kayah sausages stuffed with spiced minced meat, Burma’s big cities and small towns offer a rich variety of dishes to tickle your fancy and palate. In this episode, my cohost Mol Mol from Burmese Language Academy of Yangon (BLAY) and I discuss fritters from the roadside stalls, homemade dishes that stir up childhood memories, the special meals our parents made during festival days, and Korean and Thai dishes that have found a following among the adventurous local foodies.

If we’re tuning in with an empty stomach, better grab some snacks to munch or be prepared to drool throughout the episode. At the end of the chat (while wiping your mouth), be sure to pick up some new words and phrases introduced in the episode.

(Intro and end music courtesy of Uppbeat.)
Vocabulary

တိုင်းရင်းသား အစားအစာ ethnic cuisine
ဖန်တယ် to be acidic and bitter
ကြက်ခြေနီသုပ် a spicy, sour variety of tealeaf salad
အညာ upper Burma
တစ်ခါပြင် a single serving for a patron, a payment calculation system used in some traditional Burmese dining places
ပုတ်ပြတ် an all-inclusive fee
ငါးသလောက်ဥကြော် fried salmon fish egg
ပျဉ်းတော်သိမ်ရွက် curry leaf
မြင်းခွာရွက် Indian pennywort
ဆန်နှစ် dipped in rice batter
ဆာဘူးသီး a traditional ethnic Chin dish made with shredded corn and minced meat
စတုဒီသာ offering free meals to the general public
ရေပေါလော floating in water
မြုပ်မြုပ်ကလေး somewhat submerged in liquid
မဏ္ဍပ် pavilion
တိုဟူးနွေး soft tofu in a bowl
နှစ်ပြန်ကြော် twice-fried tofu, an ethnic Shan snack
ကယားဝက်အူချောင်း Kayah sausage
မက်ခါသီး a numbing spice seed
ခေါင်ရည် alcohol made in the ethnic regions
ရေပန်းစားတယ် to be popular, to become a trend
တုန်ယန်း Tom Yum soup
ခေါက်ဆွဲအေး cold noodle
ကုလားပဲ chickpea

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