I grew up in a food-obsessed Burmese household, and the question I get asked all the time is “where can I eat Burmese food in London?”. I’m not sure my cousin Moe would be happy with strangers turning up at her front door for coconut noodle soup and Burmese pork curry, so I’m going to go ahead and say you should head down to The Shan State in Chinatown for food that even our notoriously picky parents would be happy to eat.

The menu at Shan State is based around salads and light noodle dishes from the north of the country - imagine a cross between Indian and Chinese cuisine and you won’t be far off. The stuff you want is on the menu under ‘street foods’ and you’ll definitely want to order the Shan noodles (listed as ‘state noodles’) and tea leaf salad, which is crunchy and salty and sour, and kind of like Glastonbury in your mouth. There’s also the national dish, mohinga (‘monk noodles’) which you should definitely order, as well as coconut noodle soup if you’re looking for that too.

Everything’s here is on a par with the kind of thing you’d eat in a Burmese family home, and like any self-respecting family home, the service can be a bit slow. Don’t complain. It’s either this or Cousin Moe’s.