Phnomenon: food in Cambodia

Brewer: Boon Rawd
This isn’t actually a Cambodian beer, it’s brewed in Thailand by the same folks that bring Singha Lager to Indochina. Boon Rawd introduced it in the 1990s to compete for the bottom end of the Thai market where Singha dare not tread and, sadly, it has made its way […]

Brewer: Cambrew
One of my more fond memories of my American housemates while I was living in California was sitting out the front of our rented dive on Friday afternoons in some plastic deckchairs, drinking 40s of malt liquor from brown paper bags. We were white (and Hispanic) trash and we enjoyed white trash beer and […]

“It’s a disaster,” says Giorgio Arcasi from behind the bar in his riverfront restaurant, Pop Cafe.
“I can’t buy ice cream any more, because after one day it melts. It’s so bad for business. In April or May, if you don’t have a generator you’ll have to close.”
Guy De Launey from BBC foretells Cambodia’s […]

There is an icecream vendor that plies his wares somewhere near my house at about 5:00 am each morning. I know this because he deploys the most common tactic to sell icecream in Phnom Penh: playing a garish electronic ringtone version of the Lambada. The process by which the Forbidden Dance came to […]

Regardless of how committed you are to eating Khmer food, about a week in, you will crack, eat hamburgers, and then have the nerve to complain about the blandness of Khmer food. Then you’ll see the error of your ways and the circle of life will continue, unhindered. I’ve selected a random assortment of places […]

Brewer: Cambrew
Living in Cambodia is about being constantly surprised by everything that transpires around you. That Cambodians both manufacture and drink dark beers came as a small surprise. That they can do it well came as an even larger one. After trashing practically every cambodian beer I’ve imbibed purely for reasons of science, I […]

Guy De Launey from BBC News rounds up some of the riverfront street vendors for a short profile. It reminded me that I have to try some of that mobile palm wine. Cheers to nostartravels for the tip-off.

When Odysseus arrived at the island of the lotus eaters, he sent three men ashore to report on the locals. The men promptly got stuck into the lotus fruit, forgot their mission and desire to return home, and eventually had to dragged screaming back to the ship. Unafraid of the tales of Homer, I’ve been […]

Now that most travel writers have discovered that their audience are sick of reading soporific accounts of their day tour of Angkor Wat, they have set their sights on sunny Sihanoukville. Unlike most writers, John Henderson of Inside Bay Area loves the beachside food:

…I eat delicious, authentic Cambodian food at prices I haven’t seen since […]

My friend Roman has been in Phnom Penh for about 4 months now and claims to eat every single meal at a restaurant. His list of top picks closely matches mine which is a very good thing. Whenever he needs a cheap endorphin hit, he heads for Enjoy Restaurant for a dose of their chilli […]