Pork and Rice: The national breakfast.

There are four types of Cambodian breakfast: pork and rice (bai sach chrouk); noodles (mee cha) or noodle soup (khtieau); rice porridge (bobor); and the improvised foods of those who are starving and eat whatever they or the World Food Programme can unearth. At a rough guess, these groups equally split the population (with an outcast minority such as me who tend to only eat breakfast on weekends and therefore try to make it as decadent and calorific as humanly possible. In the view of most Cambodians, my diet is not so much unbalanced as it is unhinged; and thus somewhere outside orthodox classification).

The standard Cambodian pork and rice set is as follows: any boneless cut of pork, thinly sliced and barbecued on a wire grill over warm coals then served with a hefty plate of broken (or just cheap) rice. The pork is sometimes marinated in garlic and oil, but more often than not, is just cooked slowly over the fire to soak up the fat-induced smoke. The side is invariably pickles, most commonly cucumber. The below pickles were a piquant mix of fresh ginger, cucumber with still a hint of crispness and paper-thin slices of daikon radish.

Cambodian food - pork and rice

The set will include a bowl of thin chicken stock from the noodle soup master stock, topped with spring onions, and a dipping bowl of sweet chilli sauce (tuk mteis). The method of eating the stock is to either eat it uncut or take a small spoonful of rice and then top up your spoon with a little stock. The above chilli was blindingly hot which is a real rarity, because the sweetness tends to outweigh the capsaicin.

If cutlery is not already present on the table, then it will arrive in cup full of steaming and sterilising water (orange and plastic, above) and the correct etiquette is to wipe down your knife and fork with a provided napkin or toilet paper, disposing of the paper on the floor or into a provided tableside bin. Do not under any circumstance drink the water in the sterilising cup.

The eateries are at their busiest from 6:00am until 8:00am, as most locals have seemingly been up since sunrise and need a huge carb-and-lard boost to get them through to the interminable hours until the midday meal. When busy, all tables are considered communal. It is perfectly acceptable to intrude on anybody’s table and engage them in your wittiest repartee. My Khmer wit is extraordinarily limited, although everyone gets a laugh out of how I can’t properly pronounce the word for ‘glass’. Unlike Vietnam or Thailand where small breakfast vendors often lack tables, a Cambodian pork and rice vendor without seating and a rudimentary bench is an exception. Where the tables are not built from the thin metal, they are covered with a garish vinyl tablecloth which is either geometrically patterned or provided as an advertisement from a large soup or monosodium glutamate manufacturer.

By 9:00am, breakfast will be over. Small pork and rice joints will disappear entirely to be replaced by lunchtime soup, fish and rice vendors. Brunch is not an option.

Location: Pictured pork is from my coffee roasting friends at the corner of Street 432 and 155, but there is a pork-charring crew on practically every Phnom Penh side street in the mornings. The best guide to picking a great bai sach chrouk vendor is finding one where the barbecue is still smoking and pork is served directly from the grill to your plate. Most vendors buy their pork daily (as a cashflow issue rather than not having proper storage) and so freshness is guaranteed.

To my Jewish and Muslim friends: apologies for my outbreak of porcine goyishness this week. Next week: Less pork. More halal.

12 thoughts on “Pork and Rice: The national breakfast.”

  1. Over by 8 am, in many cases. When I first started at the Daily I worked nights, consequently I slept mornings. Suffice it to say I did not get up with the locals, and it was months before I realized we had a corner breakfast spot right on our street!

  2. That’s my favorite breakfast, can’t think of a better way to start the day…. Long live pig.

  3. Breakfast looks pretty good. My Khmer roomate often serves pickles with a meal like that here in Boston. The joke about mispronouncing ‘glass’ in Khmer reminded me of my own Khmer joke. I know only a tiny amount of Khmer, including how to count to 10. One thru five is: moi bee buy boen prahm, and then for 6-9 you take 5 (prahm) and then append one thru four (so you have prahm-moi prahm-bee prahm-buy prahm-boen). Ten, however, is dop but I would always say prahm-prahm instead of dop. Khmer kids esp. loved it, but even adults would laugh.

  4. Karen – One of my neighbours sells a single pot of noodle soup in the mornings, and she’s generally sold out by 7:30 , and her whole stand has completely vanished. Even though I start work before then, it took me months to realise that she was selling food there and not just feeding her family or washing an inordinate amount of dishes.

    Next to pho, pork and rice is by far my favourite local breakfast. Who can refused grilled meat in the morning?

  5. Hi there. We lived in Phnom Penh in the interesting time of UNTAC. We ate often at a restaurant that served one dish only. It was a soup in a pot called something like soup chenang dey – a broth which came with a selection of noodles, weeds and leaves and meats which we submerged, cooked and ate – delicious !! Do you know it and is it still there?

    1. Dtay is a question particle.

      Chenang means ‘tasty’.

      They were just saying, do you want some tasty soup!

  6. Raaewyn – Possibly. Where in Phnom Penh was it? It sounds a lot like suki soup – the Cambodian version of the Thai version of Japanese sukiyaki.

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