Myeik Wok Stall · Scissor-Cut Noodles
Kat Kyi Kaik
Photo: Hintha / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0
The dish's name literally means 'scissor-bitten' — cooks snip the wide noodles apart with a pair of scissors mid-stir-fry instead of cutting them before they hit the wok.
Wide, flat rice noodles are stir-fried with squid, prawns, bean sprouts and peas in a hot wok, with cooks using scissors to cut the noodles into shorter lengths as they fry. Myeik's street stalls are its birthplace, though the dish has since spread up the coast to Yangon.
Why it's made this way: Kat kyi kaik grew out of Myeik's identity as a major seafood port on Myanmar's southern coast, and it's often compared to the char kway teow of Malaysia and Singapore — other port cities with a similarly deep Chinese-influenced seafood-noodle tradition.
More from Myanmar
Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
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