Moe Palae’ Myanmar Restaurant

You don’t come across many Burmese eateries in this country. In fact, until Moe Palae’ opened late last year, Tāmaki Makaurau had spent eight years without a single representation of the cuisine in restaurant form. If any pressure comes with being the only place flying the flag (literally, there’s one out the front) for the cuisine in this city, Moe Palae’ does it with a kind of self-assured cool. In the spotless, sparsely adorned modern room, head chef Hein Htet Aung (who won MasterChef Myanmar in 2023) presides over a menu full of cornerstone Burmese dishes. The nan gyi thoke (chunky rice noodles tossed in toasted chickpea powder and chilli oil) is sublime in its chewiness. The a kyaw sone is presented as a composition of crisp vegetable- and prawn-filled fritters alongside a piquant sauce for dipping. The fermented tea leaf salad called laphet thoke, probably the most quintessential of Burmese dishes, is earthy, funky, briny, tangy and (in our opinion) obligatory. The ingredients for this salad are served on a single plate, each in neat little mounds: dark-green tea leaves, chickpeas, sliced green tomato, dry shrimps, whole garlic cloves, green chillies, roasted cashews. Toss them together like moodily-coloured confetti, then devour. And do wrap things up with one of the restaurant’s eye-catching traditional desserts.