Translator: Jenny Lam-Chowdhury Reviewer: sann tint
I'm going to put up a photo of my all-time favorite food.
Now, if you agree with me, that this food is also your favorite,
all I want is for you to cheer;
give it a big clap, give it a big 'whoop, whoop', whatever.
If you don't like it, you are allowed to boo.
It's the only booing you'll be doing today
so, if you like that type of thing then, this is your opportunity.
Okay, so here we go.
(Cheers)
Yes!
(Applause)
There's a few people who are not having any form of food today.
Anyway, this one fruit
has the ability to show us how powerful the act of eating can be.
Some of you, I know you're looking at this photo
and you're probably wondering if I bought any for lunch today.
I wasn't allowed to, I didn't.
Some of you are probably wondering, "Is he being serious?",
and you probably feel a bit nauseous.
But that's how emotional food can make us.
There's love and hate, and there's everything in between.
And this combination of eating and emotions,
it affects the way we perceive one another,
so you are more likely to strike a relationship
with a stranger in this crowd who reacted the same way you did.
Today, as Burma or Myanmar is rejoining the global community,
we have this exact problem.
The world's opinion about us is divided,
but, what I want to do is to show you you my idea today of a food revolution
because I think we can shape these opinions
using the love of our nation's cuisine.
Now, in case you don't know who I am or you haven't figured it out yet,
I'm infatuated by eating.
I have a bit of a problem, I'm a little obsessed, okay?
To me, food is constantly evolving.
You can have the exact same dish in two completely different environments,
and your experience is completely transformed.
For example,
have any of you ever had a coffee in the morning before the toilet?
Anyone?
Well, I'm sure there's some of you who have -
It helps the bowels, okay?
It's quite life-changing for some of us.
My life changed when I was four,
when I left Burma and I moved to the UK.
And it was just the four of us.
It was my parents, my brother and just me.
There you are.
At home was first where I fell in love with our cuisine.
But, to tell you the truth,
until I moved back to Burma, about five years ago,
this cuisine was my only real connection to this country growing up.
At home, my mom's signature dish was her Mohinga.
And this Mohinga was very special
because she would make this for breakfast, for dinner, for birthdays.
I know you're getting hungry, okay, just a minute -
for all sorts of special occasions.
But, for those of you who don't know, who may be watching, what a Mohinga is,
it's the dish we all grew up with.
It's a hot, steaming fish-based broth,
and in this country we have it in the morning, in 35 degree heat -
which I'm feeling right now -
at home, or on the street.
But if you can picture it for a second -
this is where I grew up.
So, in winter, in zero degree weather,
can you picture having that exact same dish
while the snow is falling outside?
It's a transformative experience, right?
So, this dish started off life
as a breakfast dish intended to fill you up in the morning,
but now, it has the power to keep a whole family together and warm at night.
And about two and a half years ago, I wanted to channel that experience.
I wanted to challenge the way
our local cuisine was seen and experienced,
so I was one of those crazy nut jobs that decided
that opening a restaurant would be a good idea.
Now, if people care about you,
no one will ever tell you that it is a [bad] idea.
But, we did it anyway, and we've been very lucky.
Over the last two and a half years, our representation of local cuisine
has been featured in over 50 international publications.
But, the amazing thing about that
is that most of these publications are writing about Burmese cuisine
for the very first time.
For me, if I was to describe our country through a dish,
it would be that Mohinga.
Because both the country and the dish are humble in nature.
I think both are slightly misunderstood by those who don't know it,
but I think, both have the potential to go global.
But, you see, the problem we have in this country right now,
is that we put so much emphasis on developing it,
purely with the things we can measure.
So, we measure the currency,
we measure the economy,
we measure the weather.
Sometimes, we measure the traffic,
and we tell each other how horrible the traffic has become.
But let me ask you, what about the things we can't measure?
How do we measure the way our taste buds will change over the next generation?
We can't.
How could we measure the impact that our cuisine could have
on somebody eating it for the very first time?
We can't.
But these things are just as important in the evolution of our country.
So if I put this photo in front of you,
which is a cheeseburger, right?
What is the first country that would come to mind?
Presumably, for the majority of you would be America, yes?
But, what if I told you that the burger began with the Mongol Empire,
would you believe me?
The legend goes that, as Genghis Khan and his army were conquering the world,
they had a problem.
They would often live on vast areas of land with no vegetation.
So what they did was they would get meat -
back then it was horse meat -
and they would put it under their saddle,
so they could eat as they ride.
And if you look at a map of this great empire,
you will find that a lot of this area is in a part of the world
we now call Eastern Europe.
And it's in Eastern Europe that we would see
the first version of this burger
which is the tartare, which is diced up raw meat.
Many, many, many years later,
that this dish, the tartare, would make its way to Germany,
to a city called Hamburg.
That's where it would become the hamburger,
not because it has ham in it, okay?
So, I've just broken an urban myth there.
What this story tells us is that
in the evolution of a country or a cuisine,
we shouldn't be talking about weeks, or months, or years.
We should be talking about decades, or centuries, or potentially even longer.
If you allow me to ask you some questions -
I just want you to think about it for a second -
if we hadn't been isolated for more than the last 50 years,
do you think that there would be
more Burmese restaurants around the world?
Perhaps?
Do you think that Burmese cuisine would have evolved in any way?
Perhaps?
But, do you think there would be more tourists coming into Burma?
I definitely think so.
But these are all great questions in hindsight.
Maybe they're not so relevant anymore,
but a relevant question would be something a friend asked me a couple of weeks ago
which is, "Htet, would you travel for food?"
So, let me ask you, would you travel for food?
(Audience) Yeah.
Htet Myet Oo: Yeah? Because I only travel for food, okay.
It's the only reason I get free lunch today,
so that's why I did this.
(Laughter)
And I think more and more people every year, are traveling to places
like the Coliseum and the Eiffel Tower,
not just to see these historical landmarks,
but they're traveling to sample the cuisines of that country.
Food is a big reason why we go back to these countries time and time again.
So, this is me in a food coma in Paris.
(Laughter)
You can see that.
I didn't quite make it to the Eiffel Tower but you can see why.
Last year, the UN released a survey that showed that 88.2% of people
consider gastronomy.
So, let's picture that no one here was Burmese,
or you've never been to visit Burma before.
If we were researching
whether we wanted to come to this beautiful country on holiday,
and we were part of that 88.2% ,
what do you think that we would see written about our cuisine?
Because when I moved here five years ago, this is what I saw:
"It's too oily."
"Htet, Burmese food is so oily, alright."
"It has too much MSG in it."
I like MSG, but that's for another talk.
But the truth of the matter is that
this is just the opinions of a few and these are certainly not facts.
But if we did look at some facts, what we would find is that
there are over a 135 ethnic minorities in the country.
That's a fact.
So, that's a lot of different ways of consuming food.
Rangoon, the city that we're standing in right now,
in the late 1920s had taken over New York
as the migration capital of the world.
That's also a fact.
And that's a lot of influence coming in from other countries.
So, let me ask you again,
in that 88.2%,
what do you think we should be seeing written about our cuisine?
If you look at this,
which is our coconut noodles,
you should see our generosity,
our richness as a country.
If you look at this, our prata traditionally from India,
so you should see our cultural diversity
and our history.
If you look at this
- which is our Mohinga -
it has 28 ingredients.
So, you should see the complexity of the people that we are.
The great news is
that promoting our country through our cuisine is in our reality,
with the right mix of passion and planning.
It's called Culinary Diplomacy,
and if you google it -
which I've shown you how to do in case any of you are not aware -
what you will find is a Wikipedia article which states
that Culinary Diplomacy is based on the premise that,
"the easiest way to win hearts and minds is through the stomach."
As you can tell.
And what you will have now
is a number of government-led initiatives around the world
practicing culinary diplomacy programs,
like in Thailand, like in Korea, like in the US.
If we took Thailand as an example, because they're the closest country to us,
they've released or they started
a culinary diplomacy program in 2002 called "Global Tha.""
What the government aimed to do was to subsidize and certify
as many Thai restaurants around the world as the government could afford.
They had three main targets:
Number one was they wanted to create
as many jobs for Thai hospitality migrants around the world.
Secondly, they wanted to increase exports out of Thailand,
and they thought, more Thai restaurants more exports.
And the third thing, which is very difficult to measure,
is that they wanted to increase
the global understanding and appreciation of Thai cuisine.
If you ask, whether you think they've been successful or not,
you just have to look at this.
In 2002 there were 5,500 Thai restaurants
outside of Thailand around the world;
by 2012, there were 15,000.
There were 10 million visitors going into Thailand in 2002,
and there were 32 million in 2016.
Of course, this culinary diplomacy program
is not the only reason why these numbers have gone up,
but it shows that a national initiative to do something like this
has an effect in the long term.
The truth is, that if the world had more of an affinity towards our country,
we would be less likely to be discriminated against, right?
Because we have an identity, people know who we are.
But more important than that, is in this generation and the next,
there would be more opportunity for all of us.
But, what we need to do as Burmese people, is realize that
our pride is our strength, but it can also be our weakness.
It's not enough just to believe in what you do and believe in yourself.
In the 21st century you need to convince others of it too.
My dream is to see Burmese food in every major city in the world.
Mohinga in Paris, Tea Leaf Salad in New York.
Can you picture that?
Yeah?
If our country was a train,
we have just left the station;
we've only just left it.
Culture, health, education, technology -
all of these things are all aboard this train.
We, as a country, need to put our cuisine on there as well.
It's really important.
The greatest thing about food
is that there is no such thing as a culinary dictator,
because we don't want one of those, right?
There is no such thing as a culinary coup.
So it doesn't matter the economy, the politics,
no one will be able to take away a global Burmese cuisine.
Please, enjoy your lunch everyone.
Thank you.
(Applause)