Phnomenon: food in Cambodia

Located in the middle of NGO-infested suburb Boeung Keng Kang 1, Khmer Surin restaurant has started to accept tourists by the busload. For anyone living locally looking to lunch on a lazy amok, this is as bad news as my ham-fisted attempts at alliteration. The huge villa seats patrons over three levels and while the […]

My reliable source of Cambodian food paranoia, the Lonely Planet Cambodia (4th Ed.) opens their paragraph on Cambodian food with the

…colonial adage that says ‘if you can cook it, boil it or peel it, you can eat it…otherwise forget it’

Following with bleak warnings against ice, shellfish, salad, steamed foods, empty restaurants and vendors wallowing […]

Anlong Veng’s claim to infamy is not its food. On the Thai border in Cambodia’s un-touristed northwest, Anlong Veng was the last home of the Khmer Rouge leadership and the location of Pol Pot’s unceremonious cremation on a pile of flaming refuse. A few surviving top cadres either wait for their day at the Khmer […]

Cambodian hand-painted signs from the provinces - my current minor non-food obsession.
Addendum (12 April 2007): If you can’t see the fancy photo thing above, the signs are available in my Cambodian sign flickr set.

The ubiquitous feature of the Cambodian rice paddy landscape are the sugar palms which punctuate the flat landscape, skinny fists of fronds lifted in the air like antennas to heaven. They’re a versatile plant providing fruit (palm hearts and pulp from the husk), fresh sap (which can be taken straight, fermented into vinegar or wine, […]

frizz, Cambodia’s only Dutch-owned (and capitalization-free) Khmer restaurant is located on the strip of restaurants that I tend to avoid: Phnom Penh’s riverfront. I don’t avoid them because they’re at all bad or even targeted at tourists. I just seem to have fallen prey to the habit of eating inland and then heading riverwards for […]

Amok from Malis restaurant
If there is one item of Cambodian food that incites real passion amongst tourists to Cambodia, it is fish amok (amok trei). The mousseline fish curry steamed in a banana leaf container is one of the few Cambodian foods that consistently strikes a chord with foreigners from everywhere. As much as […]