Phnomenon: food in Cambodia

Sidman has uploaded some excellent footage to YouTube, shot through rose-colored glasses in the pre-Khmer Rouge era. If you’ve never been to Cambodia, it’ll look like a cheesy 60s Disney documentary but if you’ve been to these places, you’ll probably want to cry. Parts 1 through 6 in the rest of this entry.
Also cheers […]

(Photo courtesy: mihobsen)
While the design looks like the bedroom of an evil genius hell-bent on converting the world to stark minimalism, the kitchen is now the boudoir of culinary mastermind, Paul Hutt, fresh from Meric in Siem Reap. Not to be outdone by his former coworkers, Bed Supperclub in Bangkok has kindly offered a dinner […]

Meric, the modern Cambodian restaurant at Hotel De La Paix that is putting Siem Reap on the map as a food destination, has kindly offered a complimentary 7 course Khmer Set Dinner for two people for Menu For Hope. Put the prize code as AP17 at Menu for Hope. You’ll also win the pepper.
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Just like P. Diddy, Phnomenon is all about the Benjamins. One week down and Menu for Hope has raised 24 grand for the UN World Food Programme. This means we’ve hit the crucial half-Landcruiser mark (or alternately, about 60 tonnes of rice*). If you’re unimpressed with my prize, here’s a few of my picks from […]

After a hard day of terminating contracts in Samlot, infamous Third World infant exporter Angelina Jolie feeds her son a plateful of late night Cambodian crickets. At the moment, this is about the best coverage that Cambodian food can receive from the mainstream press.

It says something very special about the Cambodian national psyche that the nation’s two most popular beers share the same name. APB, the now-owners of this pan-Asian trash beer, somehow convinced Cambodia to pronounce their pilsener “Anne Chore” instead of “Angkor”. In a more just and reasonable world, the correct pronunciation would be “aing churr” […]

While I occasionally rue the quality of olives at a Phnom Penh tapas joint or regularly spend the average Cambodian monthly income on a single meal, about a third of Cambodians are malnourished. There isn’t any irony in writing about food in a country where I regularly meet starving people. Occasionally, they are eating from […]

Huzzah! Phnomenon turns one today. What started as little more than a fatuous vanity project wherein I could make snide comments about watery beer has blossomed to become slightly less fatuous and even more snide. There were loose plans to buy a badly-worded Cambodian birthday cake for the blog but the only thing sadder than […]

The squid on the beach in Sihanoukville is crap but I love it. The beachside barbecued squid (mohk aing) may be rubbery, overcooked, and subject to the ignominy of suspect storage and the discomfiture of dodgy handling but the context matters more than the food itself. Sitting in a deckchair, bare feet in the sand, […]