Burmese Tea Shops Serve One Tea to Drink and Another to Eat

The theory of tea shop culture in Myanmar is well covered elsewhere. This is about the version you meet in practice.

Two uses for one leaf

Myanmar is unusual in treating tea as both a drink and a food made from the same plant. Laphet is tea leaf that has been fermented and preserved, and it is eaten rather than infused in water. Laphet yay is the drinking tea, made strong and sweetened heavily with condensed and evaporated milk.

Both are ordered in the same tea shops, often at the same table, and neither is considered the odd one out. Very few tea cultures anywhere have developed the eating side to this extent, which makes it genuinely distinctive.

What the drinking tea is like

The tea is brewed strong, usually from a robust local or imported black leaf, and then built in the glass rather than the pot. Condensed milk goes in for sweetness and body, and evaporated milk goes in for the dairy without more sugar. Adjusting the ratio of the two is how a drinker specifies sweetness, and shops have shorthand terms for the common settings.

The result is sweet, thick and strong, sitting closer to the condensed-milk teas of the wider region than to Indian chai. It is drunk in small glasses and is usually accompanied by a pot of plain weak green tea provided free at the table.

The free green tea

Most tea shops put a flask or pot of plain, very light green tea on the table without charging for it. It functions as water does elsewhere, drunk between mouthfuls of the sweet tea and throughout the meal.

That pairing of a sweet strong drink with a plain weak one is an elegant solution to a very sweet cup. It also means the tea shop can be occupied for a long time without spending very much money. Anybody used to paying for everything on the table finds this arrangement takes a little getting used to.

The tea shop as an institution

Tea shops in Myanmar function as meeting places, news exchanges, informal offices and places to spend an afternoon. They serve food throughout the day, and the range on offer is substantially wider than at most chai stalls. Ordering is quick, tables turn over unevenly, and nobody is hurried out for lingering over an empty glass.

That social role is the closest parallel to the Indian chai stall, arrived at through a completely different drink.

The physical form differs too, with more seating and a stronger expectation that you will stay a while.

The eaten leaf

Fermented tea leaf has a sour, savoury, faintly bitter character quite unlike anything brewed from the same plant. It is served with crisp fried beans, nuts, sesame, garlic and shredded vegetables, mixed at the table. It appears at meals, at gatherings and traditionally in contexts where an offer carries social meaning.

Ground fresh, the preparation is a food rather than a tea in any brewing sense, and it belongs to a kitchen tradition of its own. For a tea drinker the interesting part is simply that the leaf has this second life at all.

Spices fade at their own pace, and a year-old tin needs more of everything.

Making the drinking tea at home

Brew a strong black tea, considerably stronger than you would drink plain, since the milk is about to arrive in quantity. Put a spoon of condensed milk into the glass first, then a splash of evaporated milk, then pour the tea over both. Stir thoroughly, because condensed milk sinks and will otherwise sit as a syrup layer at the bottom.

Adjust by moving the balance between the two milks rather than by adding sugar separately. Serve it with a glass of very weak plain tea alongside, because the pairing is doing real work.

The takeaway

One plant, two entirely different traditions, and a tea shop where you can order both without anybody blinking.

Measure it properly once, then never measure it again.