Like a reverse Sam-I-Am, I would eat Burmese food anywhere: I have traveled to Vancouver for tea-leaf salad, made unscheduled stops in Portland for yellow lentil tofu, and detoured to Daly City from San Francisco to devour a bowl of ohn no khao swè—coconut chicken soup. The only place I don’t eat it, sadly, is Seattle, because there are no Burmese restaurants here.

The cuisine of Myanmar shares some bold flavors with Thailand and rich curries with India but its elaborate salads and embrace of fermented seafood is distinctly Burmese. The country has been under military dictatorships on and off for more than 50 years, though, which—along with far more grave issues—made it difficult to find essential ingredients, like pickled tea leaves. At the same time, the Burmese American population skews young and male, and Washington’s is quite small—less than 5,000—not a recipe for a thriving restaurant culture.

The lack of Burmese restaurants makes it tough for immigrants craving a taste of home and anyone else to find these unique dishes. Until Rangoon Bistro expands north from Portland (rumor is, they’re interested), the closest thing to a Burmese restaurant in Western Washington is a Buddhist organization just north of Maltby that serves mohinga—fish soup—and more on a not-quite monthly basis.

The April version of the donation-driven food festival at the Theravada Buddha Sasana Organization was a celebration of Burmese New Year, so my daughters spent the afternoon squirting strangers with water as the live band played a mix of traditional Burmese songs and classic rock. I spent it making multiple trips to the various chafing-dish and stew-pot covered tables for vegetarian samosas, pork sticky rice, cassava cake, and shwe yin aye—a multicolored dessert of chilled coconut milk with pandan jelly noodles, coconut jelly, and sago pearls.

“We welcome anyone who loves Burmese food,” says Aung Win, a hotel manager from Portland, leader in the organization, and member of the band. He comes up for each event, arriving on Thursday night to spend Friday helping mow the lawn, set up tables, and erect the tents before band practice with the Classic Boys, as they call themselves. Some months, he also contributes to the food—his specialty is coconut chicken noodles by the 60-quart batch.

I met him at March’s festival, when he helped me find a seat at an event that drew more of a crowd than expected—some 500 people over three hours. In April, as I made my way into the dirt driveway and up the slight hill to the grassy flat, I saw they had adjusted. The buffet tables holding a few dozen dishes now ran in a single long line, paralleled by dining tables, effectively spreading out the crowds and making it easy to find a place to sit.

Most months, there are 20 to 30 dishes, some of which run out quickly, but that’s more than anyone could fit on the cafeteria-style divided plastic plates, anyway. The mohinga is always a favorite among the Burmese community, says Win. “In Burma, we eat that fish soup for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” A group served it from inside a covered patio at the festival, next to a table of condiments with which to dress each bowl: fried onions, cilantro, chili powder, and lime wedges. Noodle salad is another of Win’s personal recommendations, a combination of two kinds of noodles, veggies, shredded cabbage, and chickpea powder, with a fish sauce and lime dressing.

Some of the dishes I recognized from meals at Burmese restaurants, others I learned about by chatting with the volunteer chefs—all of whom seemed to be having as much fun serving as the attendees did eating. The event feels like a community picnic, even for those not yet part of the community. That’s the idea, says Win—everyone is invited. “Everybody, every age, every group, every living being.”

The organization puts on the festivals a few times a year (with the schedule on its website and Facebook page), and, technically, there’s no cost to attend. Realistically, the festivals function as fundraisers for the nonprofit organization through donations. A table at the entrance accepts cash, Venmo, Zelle, and more. “Anything is generosity, that’s our tradition,” Win says when I ask the suggested amount. That keeps it open to Burmese students, many of whom are studying here because they fled their homes to avoid forced conscription by the military dictatorship, he explains, and thus have little money. “We just invite them: Come down, let’s eat. We have a lot of food. They need that support as well.”

Right now, donations go toward the organization’s goal of building a new hall to give the resident monk, a mechanical engineer by training named Ashin Pannobhasa, more space to teach meditation and mindfulness classes.

They hope the new building will also have the space for indoor versions of the food festival, allowing them to continue into the winter—right now, there are only two more scheduled for the year, on June 21 and September 27. Which means each of my contributions to the organization also serves my personal goal of getting the Seattle area a more stable source of Burmese food.