Blue Box on Wangara’s Industrial Backstreets Serves Burmese Dishes You Rarely Find Outside Myanmar

This is a love story. Rose and Elvin Foster met in Yangon. They were high school sweethearts, but were then separated for 16 years when Elvin moved to Australia with his parents. In 2005, he returned to Myanmar determined to find Rose and reignite their love. “I’ve only ever loved one man, Elvin. I waited for him,” Rose says. Once reunited, they found their way to Perth, where their shared passion for food and community blossomed into Blue Box.

On weekdays, Blue Box looks like a typical lunch bar. There’s a hot box stacked with pies, fridges filled with energy drinks, and a steady stream of tradies stopping in for something quick to eat. Look closer and things get interesting. Next to the cartons of choccy milk are tubs of house-made Burmese yoghurt – firm and slightly tart – with a thick, caramel-like jaggery syrup to pour over the top. Instead of Smith’s chips, shelves are stocked with Burmese groceries and snacks: chickpea crisps, fermented tea leaves for lahpet, and balachaung.

“We bought it as a pie shop,” says Rose. “We kept the pies on the menu but added Burmese dishes, too.”

The New Zealand abalone pie that made the shop famous amongst locals is still there. But Rose’s daily menu of Burmese dishes is what keeps people coming back – from mohinga, a comforting fish noodle soup often called Myanmar’s national dish, to ohn no khao swe, the Burmese version of Thailand’s khao soi.

While mohinga and ohn no khao swe are two of the more familiar Burmese dishes, you’d be forgiven for never having tasted or even heard of them before. Compared to its neighbours Thailand, China and India, little is known about Burmese cuisine outside of Myanmar. Decades of political conflict and isolationist policies that restrict tourism, trade and cultural exchange has meant that much of the country’s culinary traditions aren’t often exposed to the rest of the world.

Rose and Elvin are here to change that. They’ll show you that Burmese food is as much about texture as it is about flavour. Take lahpet, the fermented tea leaf salad that’s savoury, funky and full of crunch with crisp-fried beans and roasted nuts; or Shan tofu noi, made from chickpea flour that’s stirred continuously for 90 minutes until it reaches a custardy, rich consistency – a weekend specialty that’s topped with paprika-rich chicken curry and a handful of crushed peanuts. Each dish is a lesson in balance: crisp, soft, chewy, creamy – all in a single bite.

Visit Blue Box enough times, and the regional diversity of Burmese cuisine becomes clear. The cuisine of Rakhine, the coastal state Rose hails from, is lighter on oil and spicier than central Burmese dishes, with a focus on seafood. Rakhine monti is a clear, fish-based noodle soup dotted with fried chickpeas, fishcakes and fried onion. Its drier cousin, Rakhine monti salad, offers a vibrant, deeply satisfying combination of flavours rarely encountered outside Myanmar.

Over the past three years, Blue Box has become a cornerstone for Perth’s Burmese community. Homesick expats drop by throughout the week – including one family that drives up from Bunbury every fortnight to stock up on takeaway meals – while weekends turn the lunch bar into a lively gathering spot, where neighbours and friends reconnect over the taste of home and cups of house-brewed Burmese tea, sweetened with condensed milk.

“If you’ve been to Burma, you know they have little tea shops where you can sit, have a meal and enjoy some tea,” says Rose. “We wanted to create a place like this.”

Now, their lunch-bar-slash-tea shop hums with an energy all its own. One table might hold a group of tradies curious enough to swap a steak and pepper pie for a bowl of mohinga; another is crowded with families catching up over fried Shan tofu and milky tea. It’s this mix – part canteen, part cultural hub – that makes Blue Box such an unlikely, and remarkable, addition to Perth’s food landscape.

Blue Box
2 Chokolich Street, Wangara
0420905962

Hours:
Tues to Fri 7am–2pm
Sat & Sun 8.30am–2.30pm

www.facebook.com/blueboxwangara