To understand Myanmar cuisine, start with the humble youtiao. If you’re from China, you’ll know it as the fried dough stick commonly dipped in soy milk or eaten with congee. But in Myanmar it’s often dunked into sweetened, milky tea – a staple introduced from India.

‘It’s a natural fusion,’ says Htet Myet Oo, owner of Rangoon Tea House, a restaurant housed in a refurbished, high-ceilinged colonial building in Yangon’s historic downtown. In contrast to the somewhat forcefully fused cuisine that creative restaurants around the world produce, Burmese food’s fusion resulted not from dining trends but from geography and history.

‘There’s a lot of misunderstanding of what Myanmar cuisine is. A lot of people don’t know where Myanmar is, don’t often know the country is between China and India, bordering Bangladesh and Thailand. So you have those influences,’ says Htet. Compound that with the country’s diversity – there are more than 100 ethnic groups – and you have a cuisine that’s not easy to classify or describe.

The flavours can be jarringly pungent to the uninitiated. Take the common breakfast food, mohinga: thin rice noodles served in a hot and sour fish soup. Tea leaf salad is another classic, using fermented tea leaves as the main ingredient, which bewilders foreign taste buds as much as it tantalises. Heavy doses of garlic, peppers, fish sauce and turmeric are standard fare across the cuisine. Adding to the unfamiliarity is the fact that Burmese food has only been around for as long as the country has been in existence, about 130 years.