"This is one of the main babies we got in here, our child."
That is how Alex Regules introduces the mohinga at Laksa. He co-owns the stall, along with Lin's Poke & Sushi a few steps away, and this is the bowl he leads with.
"It's our unofficial national dish," he says.
He's right on both counts. Myanmar has never named an official one, and mohinga wins the vote anyway: a fish broth poured over rice noodles, sold off street carts and out of teashops before most of the country is properly awake.
"It's a breakfast item, but we eat this all day long," he says.
That is how it works here too. The bowl comes out of the kitchen at two in the afternoon the same way it would at seven in the morning, and nobody in the market blinks at it.
It arrives loaded. Crisp fried fritters lean on the rim with a wedge of lime beside them. Underneath is a deep red broth over rice noodles, a halved boiled egg, soft slabs of tofu, and a tangle of sliced scallion, slivered onion, and cilantro laid across the top to cut the richness. You squeeze the lime, stir everything down, and the bowl changes as you go.
"So every bite is unique, every bite is special," he says.
The cooking comes from home, by way of a long detour. "My wife is Burmese," Alex says. "My wife spent 10 years in Malaysia, and she's a food lover by heart. That will describe her personality, a food lover, a decade."
That decade is why the menu reads the way it does, Burmese and Malaysian sharing one counter, mohinga a few lines down from the laksa the stall is named for.
"Let us show you how we cook, how we eat our food, our traditions," he says. "Glad to share that with you."
You'll find Laksa inside St. Roch Market at 2381 St. Claude Ave, alongside the tea leaf salad, the coconut curries, and the rest of the noodle soups.