#lahpet

My colleague recently made me lahpet which is a Burmese salad including pickled tea leaves, dried beans mix, and tomatoes. I loved it and wanted more. I live in a densely Chinese area and thought one of the many supermarkets might have something Burmese, so I brought the empty jar to every store.

Many don't speak english, but that's fine. I had a jar! All interactions basically went like this;

None of them knew Burmese so couldn't even tell me if they had something similar

I gave up and bought it online. Also had a hard time with that cos they don't deliver to apartments (got the vibe that it's just the shop owners son doing deliveries and he couldn't be fucked going upstairs. Valid). But I persevered and got three jars! And the dried beans mix I needed. Way too many dried beans, I totally misjudged the size of the bag being sold

I used one to show my friends this salad. They didn't go as insane over it as I did. I gave another jar to my dad who did go appropriately insane. He said he liked it, then five min later interrupted to say he really liked it, then after dinner spent time with me going through the ingredients and trying to figure out if he can pickle tea leaves himself. Booyah.

Regardless, this left me with one jar which I swiftly finished. So I'm on the hunt again and the online store stresses me out now cos they don't like apartments

I found a Burmese supermarket a few suburbs away and a twenty min walk from the station. Fucking worth it, it's added two hours to my commute home but I want these jars so much. I enjoyed the stroll. It rained a bit, so I saw a couple rainbows

In the store I was, again, immediately stressed. I went down an aisle and back again and found nothing. I found other pickled things! But not my tea leaves! I did not want this trip to be in vain, it was long and I had a shit day at work. I was really only doing it today cos the days a write off as a bad day so I may as well run an annoying errand

Anyway I pulled up the website and showed the lady at the counter a photo of the jar and she pointed me to them immediately. I returned like fifteen seconds later with four jars and she was already on a phone call with someone. I love workers rights. You're awesome, lady.

So I say four and hold four fingers up and pass her one jar. She scans and sets the price right. She then interrupts whoever's talking on the phone to ask me, "How you know this?"

So I quickly explained that my colleague made me the salad and I loved it. She pointed back at the aisle and said, "the beans, you need beans." So I was like "I have so many beans, I bought too many, I just need the pickled leaves." And she was already waving her hand at me in disinterest so I stopped talking and paid lol.

It was a long haul home. I passed and remember to take a photo of my favourite art installation, the tower of coffee cups in a pole.

There's no starbucks in my suburb so one of these at least has taken a long trip to get here. So did I today, my feet are sore

Anyway, I have four jars of miraculous pickled tea leaves. If you can figure out how to buy these ingredients I recommend it to serve alongside very fatty meals like lasagne or sausage cos it cuts through nicely. I also take a serving to work every day because the tea leaves are caffeinated so I'm skipping the second coffee

This colorful dish is called Lahpet Thohk, Burmese picked tea leaf salad. Lahpet refers to pickled tea leaves, which are used in various dishes. This particular dish is a national dish in Burma or Myanmar. Besides the tea leaves, the dish here contains sesame, garlic, peanuts, shredded ginger, hot peppers, and limes.

A place that had been on my list of places to try for a while now is Lahpet.  At one point, I thought I might just wait until they open their new restaurant in Covent Garden but in the end, I couldn’t wait and decided to go try the original restaurant in Shoreditch.

For our starters, we had a bit of a selection and the first things we tried was this platter of fritters.  The 3 different types were Mandalay (kidney bean and ginger), Shan Tofu and split pea.  I really liked the split pea and the tofu but I thought the ginger in the Mandalay was just a little overpowering.

This was the ginger salad.  The ginger in this was pickled so wasn’t quite as gingery as what was in the mandalay.  As you can see, there was also a bunch of other stuff including refried beans, tomatoes, cabbage and peanuts.  My favourite bit of this was the peanuts as they were really crunchy and fragrant.

The pickled tea leaf salad.  I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this but was very pleasantly surprised.  It was a very big portion but it was very more-ish.  There were quite a few similar flavours (and ingredients) to the ginger salad but I felt that this was a bit more savoury, maybe from the dried shrimp.  I can see why this is a bit of a signature dish at Lahpet.

Our last starter was this paratha with a yellow pea filling.  The paratha was really well made, super flakey and crispy.  I thought the filling wasn’t bad but I think it must’ve been the carnivore in me that felt I would’ve just liked it a bit more if the filling had some meat (and I’m thinking pork) in it.

For our mains, we had the hake masala.  This came with a pool of curry sauce and a lemongrass rosti that was lovely and crispy.  The fish was cooked perfectly and the sauce was mild in spiciness but full on flavour.  We’d ordered some rice on the side which the sauce was perfect for.

The other main we ordered was the pork and mustard green curry.  This was quite a soupy curry but had these big chunks of pork shoulder in it that were tender to the point of falling apart from a touch of the wooden spoon.  It was a really tasty curry and definitely needed the side of rice that we ordered. 

I really enjoyed this meal at Lahpet and I would definitely go back to try their bowls of noodles.  I’m looking forward to them opening their new restaurant in Covent Garden as I’m always happy to have another option for a tasty bowl of noodles :)

Lahpet, 58 Bethnal Green Road, London, E1 6JW