Foodie Run Yangon 2016 was held in downtown yesterday, designed to introduce young local people to traditional Myanmar food. 
About 100 young people ran in the downtown area from 9 am to 12 pm to explore hidden restaurants and local street food with group activities in the first ever foodie run in Myanmar. The run was organised by My Lann, an online food directory.
Sandi Sein Thein, sales and marketing director of My Lann said that the foodie run was designed for local young people since some foreigners here have already explored many traditional Myanmar food sellers while many local young people haven’t. “Downtown is full of the hidden street food,” she added, “We want young people to aware of them.” 
Nan Shoon Pyie Thar, an undergraduate student in Dagon University took part in the foodie run with four other friends in a team named Hikaholic. She said they all loved food so they came to this event. “We are not very familiar with Myanmar food,” She added, “By playing this game, we can recall the memories of Myanmar food.” The team members ran to find various traditional Myanmar dishes on the street, tasting and uploading selfies with food sellers or in restaurants on Facebook. They also asked some street food sellers to teach them how to cook traditional food. Sandi said tagging and showing selfies on Facebook made it easy to go viral, which might be a good way to promote traditional Myanmar dishes. 
Every team had a checklist of the kinds of foods they need to explore. Sandi said that there were 35 teams participating in the event and they would calculate the scores of teams according to how many foods they found and the pictures they posted on Facebook. The first 12 teams were ranked.
Fusiongals, a team consisting of five cousins, won the second prize. Phyu Phwe Hnin, one team member, said what was most interesting during the event was exploring new things especially Myanmar dishes they didn’t know before, such as bainmoke (like a cake with rice, eggs, groundnuts and coconuts).
Myanmar has a variety of dishes from many ethnicities. Though its cuisine is influenced by neighboring countries, especially India, Thailand and China, it still has its own specialties, a BBC street food tour of Yangon wrote. 
Sandi said one specialty of Myanmar food was that there were a lot of snacks, but there were also challenges in promoting them. “People just aren’t aware of them,” she added, “street food sellers, aren’t very well known.”