By Adrian Parker, Semester at Sea Spring 2017
The cuisines in Myanmar can only be explained as complicated yet simple. Their diets consisted of mainly rice and curry sauces. This is an obvious influence of their neighboring country, India. The first meal that I ate that I would consider authentically Burmese was a breakfast dish, which was simply a bowl of rice noodles with a pungent fishy sauce. It was absolutely delicious and had a very unique and specific flavor to it, unfortunately the smell was not too pleasant. But after you got over the fact that you were swallowing fishy rice noodles and eight o’clock in the morning, you come to appreciate the warming taste.
The other dish that I really enjoyed was definitely their curry and rice dishes. Most of the restaurants where we ate in Bagan had three different types of curry to choose from; coconut cream, red, and green. The coconut was the mild (and oddly sweet) curry; the red was medium in spicy; and the green was almost unbearably spicy. Some people in our group couldn’t even get past the first bite before quitting. The locals (and the rest of my group) had a nice laugh about that.
Lastly, the sweets in Myanmar were actually surprisingly sweet. They would hand make these candies that you would get after each meal. They tasted like grinded up dried fruit and sugar. They were so good and melted in your mouth. Can’t wait to compare Myanmar with India, im guessing there will be many similarities
