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.
Lotophagi
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 meaning to try some of these lotus heads ever since I’ve seen vendors balancing them on their heads down on the riverfront but never really knew how to open the things up and feast on the goo inside. Over the weekend, I ran into one of my work colleagues, a confessed lotus-eater, and he showed me how.
Firstly, acquire yourself a few lotus heads (1000 riel for three)
Secondly, remove the seed pod from the shower head and remove the outer green casing to reveal the white innards.
Lastly, eat the white part. It tastes like slightly astringent snow peas and is probably one of the lowest yielding snacks around.
Sihanoukville is the next Goa 2: Electric Boogaloo
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 rural Egypt in the ’70s. At one charming, romantic bar/restaurant called Le Roseau, a new taste thrill called coconut amok chicken is simply one of the 10 best dishes of my life. With sticky white rice and an ice-cold beer, the total cost: $3.50.
If commercialization in Cambodia has risen, prices have not. In two weeks in Cambodia, my most expensive dish has been $5. For that I received a plate piled high with a pound of crabs in garlic sauce at Treasure Island Restaurant, where I had my own gazebo overlooking the Gulf of Thailand a few feet away.
I’m not sure about the authenticity of amok chicken but if it convinces people that there is more to Cambodia than Angkor Wat, I’m all for it.
Enjoy Restaurant
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 chicken (pictured). It’s cheap, boneless and hot enough to blow a clear path through your sinuses.
Enjoy serve Khmer, Western and Chinese food, but err towards the side of Chinese. Visually, they’re indistinguishable from your metal tabled, scraps-on-the-floor Cambodian restaurant, but cater to the non-Khmer crowd by actually having a menu.
Location: Corner of st. 217 and the loop around Psar Thmei.
Num Anksom Cheik on Mao Tse Tung Boulevard
Phnom Penh has had an increased wave of power shortages in recent weeks and because I work a further from the richer part of Phnom Penh than most, these happen at random and recently, happen for three hours a day about three times a week. The upside of this has been that I have an excuse to do laps of the surrounding blocks looking for street food that I haven’t yet tried.
Num anksom cheik are bananas wrapped in a glutinous coconut sticky rice, then boiled in a banana leaf package. They’re popular as an offering to monks, the poor, and your backyard shrine around Khmer New Year; but are delicious regardless of which of the three new years you deign to celebrate. This variant, which my co-workers call anksom s’raat(?), skip the boiling process and head straight onto the barbecue to form a crispier shell.
Location: In the classic Khmer style of economies of agglomeration, you’ll find three or four of these vendors in front of the Chinese Embassy building on Mao Tse Tung Boulevard (between St.173 and 167), selling exactly the same thing.
Happy Year of The Dog
Phnom Penh hedges it’s bets and partly closes down for two or so days. There is still the occasional bewildered dragon troupe roaming the streets, looking for a shopkeeper to molest. I like a country with three New Years each calendar year.
Since my Universal New Year resolutions have already gone to the dogs, this Lunar New Year I propose: more food market reviews, doing some actual interviews, and finish cutting my swathe through Cambodia’s beers.
Sugar Palm
Someone recommended to me that Sugar Palm had the best fish amok in town; but sadly they’re completely wrong. Sugar Palm’s menu describes itself as Thai-Khmer fusion and the combination of having the word “fusion” on the menu and being on the trendy end of Street 240 should have rung the culinary alarm bell. I shared the fish amok($6) and a random Khmer pork curry ($5), steamed rice and a few Anchors($1.50 per can).
As a positive, the amok has cured my desire for salt for the next month. It was well presented in a carved coconut shell bowl but at $6, you’d hope that it would be a crazy taste sensation as well. It had just started to form the beautiful mousseline consistency that amok should, but it wasn’t quite there by the time it arrived on our table.
The curry wasn’t too bad, but then again, it’s fairly rare that you receive a terminally bad Khmer-style curry anywhere in Phnom Penh. Being served a single, well-formed tablespoon of rice on a large plate annoys me, but the staff were extremely forthcoming in serving more and were generally attentive.
Location: Street 240, near the corner of Street 19.
Why Is Everybody Going to Cambodia?
So asks Matt Gross in the New York Times this week, after one hell of an expensive junket in Siem Reap. He might have enjoyed listening to Morcheeba on the complementary iPod Mini in his airport transfer Lexus, but he wasn’t all too keen on the food:
While Cambodian food looks a bit like that of neighboring Thailand and Vietnam – curries and stews, noodle dishes and lots of rice – it’s rarely as tasty.
He does give thumbs up to his friend Paul Hutt at Meric, Khmer Kitchen, Dead Fish Tower, and Abacus.
Brunch at Gasolina
If the expat bar Elsewhere was a phenomenological question rather than a bar, the answer from Phnom Penh’s francophone community would be Gasolina. The recently opened Latin-flavoured bar fills the niche for an expat beer garden not specifically targeted at Australian Embassy staff. Proprietor, Jean-Phillippe is Phnom Penh’s most attractive bar owner and he has managed to open a beer garden that rivals even his own capacious beauty.
Commitment to a cause rates highly in my books, especially when that cause is a late breakfast that involves bacon. Despite being a bar in the evenings, Gasolina is wholly committed to brunch; so much so that it only serves three choices of set breakfast on Saturday and Sunday from 10am. Of the three sets, I had the Alegria Loca ($5.00) which entailed three courses: bacon and eggs, a garden salad with olives, and a “tartine of chorizo” (pictured), with a fresh pineapple juice and choice of coffee, tea or chocolate. I can quite happily dwell over brunch for a good two hours, and this is a brunch over which to dwell. Rather than all arriving in a single hit, the courses are well paced.
If there was a prize for Indochina’s best edible emulsion, Gasolina’s garlicky vinaigrette would win hands down. It came on the side with the garden salad and had I been of coarser stock, I probably would have drank it straight, eaten the olives from the salad, and left the rest of the greenery behind. Calling thin slices of chorizo and cheap cheese on toast a “tartine” is a little far-fetched, but I’m a sucker for decent smallgoods, so the sausage slices made my morning a happier place.
I’m blindly assuming that the bar is named after the Daddy Yankee reggaeton hit rather than processed petroleum. Thankfully, the song was absent from the morning’s music which swerved from solid salsa to the Blue Note back catalogue.
Location: Street 57, just south of St.370; within smelling distance of BKK Market.
Steve, the quality drops
Only the most jaded expat would name their water product Steve and place
such an outrageously poor pun on the bottle. I fail to believe that this a translation error. This is an act of unadulerated malice against some poor
reverse osmosis facility in Toul Kork.
Location: From a fruit juice/soda seller in Russian Market.
I’ve never seen it anywhere else.
Addendum (27/01/2005): I almost ran into a Steve Water delivery van on my motorbike today; so moved I was with my own incredulity. Obviously, it has a wider distribution than I first thought.