Oh, curry. The troublemaker. The seducer. The steaming cauldron of spicy chaos that ruins shirts, stains fingers, and perfumes your house for three days straight — and yet somehow still makes you crawl back begging for more. There’s nothing subtle about curry. It hits you like a warm slap, a mix of heat and sweetness and funk so complex it could qualify as an emotional experience. People cross oceans for this stuff. Some travel just to sweat through one bowl.

I’ve been chasing curry since I was a kid — Indian, Thai, whatever Albuquerque could throw at me. My education came from Taj Mahal and India Palace, where I’d waddle out of the lunch buffet stuffed to the point of self-loathing, but spiritually elevated. That’s where I learned that “ethnic cuisine” didn’t mean exotic; it meant delicious. It meant home, if home smelled like fenugreek and chili oil.

There’s a family story my grandmother loves to tell. I was five, clutching a plate of chicken makhani like it was gold bullion. She asked for a bite. I told her no. Flat out. Heartless. I regret many things from childhood, but not that. Curry loyalty starts young.

For years, though, I never tried making it myself. Something about it felt off-limits, like you needed an Asian grandmother, a degree in spice alchemy, or at least someone to slap your hand every time you reached for the wrong chili. I didn’t have any of that. So I ate curry in restaurants and stayed in my lane.

Then Myanmar happened.

Inle Lake — that quiet, moody stretch of water tucked into the Shan hills — is where my curry training wheels finally came off. I signed up for a family-run cooking class that everyone told me was the real deal. And they were right. It was held in a bamboo house, the kind that sways when you breathe too hard, with a handful of instructors who moved with the confidence of people who’ve lived their entire lives in a kitchen.

The couple running it had clawed their way out of poverty by teaching clueless foreigners like me how to cook the dishes they grew up eating. Their pride was infectious. In Myanmar, people don’t hide their food or their stories — they offer them to you like gifts.

That day was cold, rainy, and miserable, but the moment we walked in, the air changed. No long introductions, no lecture. Just fire, fish sauce, charcoal, woks, and hunger.

We cooked everything — coconut chicken curry, spicy fish curry, pumpkin curry, potato and eggplant curry — plus salads the Burmese worship: pickled tea leaf, avocado, snow pea leaf, cucumber. It was hands-on, messy, loud. The good kind of chaos. By the end, the only thing keeping us awake was the icy lake breeze blowing through the bamboo walls and the fact that falling asleep at the table would have been embarrassing.

The curry I fell for was the spicy Burmese fish curry — butterfish simmered until it soaked up all the ginger, garlic, turmeric, chili, and whatever magic powder the instructor added when he thought we weren’t looking. They never gave us the recipes, which is cruel, but apparently part of the charm.

Back home, I made it again — cod instead of butterfish — for my grandmother’s birthday. She asked for a bite this time. I said yes. That’s growth. And the curry? It was perfect. Spicy on the back end, warm up front, even better the next day.

You’re going to love it too. Just don’t wear white.