Category: Meta

Siem Reap is the next Las Vegas

Siem Reap, the increasingly popular base for visitors to Angkor Wat, is beginning to feel a little like the Las Vegas of Cambodia, with one showy hotel after another being built along the highway into town. (Is it just a matter of time before the signature of Steve Wynn graces the skyline?)

Stuart Emmerich from the New York Times rounds out his Cambodian sojourn with both a review of Siem Reap’s Hôtel de la Paix and another peculiar geographic simile. Siem Reap would be much like Las Vegas if most Las Vegans began living a rice-based subsistence lifestyle in one of the poorest provinces in the nation. At least this time, he ate some Cambodian food at:

…Meric: a seven-course Khmer tasting menu, which features such dishes as stir-fried pork with ginger (superb), braised bar fish with palm sugar and green mango (an acquired taste) and ‘assorted Khmer sweets’ (not very sweet).

He was also thwarted in his attempt to buy a non-alcoholic beer in the kindest possible way.

See also: NY Times’ Siem Reap, Cambodia: Hôtel de la Paix, Phnom Penh is the “next Prague”, Sihanoukville is the next Goa, Sihanoukville is the next Goa 2: Electric Boogaloo, Sihanoukville is the next Goa III: Beyond Thunderdome

Blowing my own (French) horn

Il fait saliver ses lecteurs en vantant le mérites des cantines le plus discrètes pour déguster de travers de porc frits ou du num pan chen, la “foccacia” khmère. Il brocarde avec humour journalistes et guides etrangers pour qui la gastronomie cambodgienne se résume au poisson amok ou à exotisme convenu, tels les insects grillés. Phil Lees anime avec talent un blog sur internet entierement consacre a la cuisine khmere.

Bienvenue, lecteurs de Cambodge Soir. Je suis désolé que je n’ai aucun contenu dans votre langue maternelle. Cependant, je dis des plaisanteries au sujet du colonialisme et postmodernisme français.

Cheers to Samuel Bartholin for the interview in today’s Cambodge Soir newspaper and mentioning deep-fried pork ribs in the very first sentence of the article.
Continue reading Blowing my own (French) horn

Phnom Penh is the “Next Prague”

So sayeth the New York Times in their most recent run-of-the-mill review of Phnom Penh by Stuart Emmerich, who managed to cover the town with his parachute still attached. On matters of eating, he lands a few blows to the doughy belly of the Foreign Correspondent’s Club (“undistinguished (at best), and the toothache-inducing fruity drinks should be passed up in favor of a cold bottle of Angkor Beer”) and displays a complete inability to do the most basic research on restaurants in this strange, foreign country:

For truly authentic Khmer cuisine, one must go to nameless little places all over town where you’ll spend less than a dollar — but it might not be advisable to ask just exactly what this meat you are eating is.

It’s whatever meat you ordered. And here’s a list of the names of 870 restaurants in Phnom Penh, all in English, from the Cambodian Yellow Pages. They shall not remain nameless.

See also: NY Times’ In Phnom Penh, Hopefulness Replaces Despair, Sihanoukville is the next Goa, Sihanoukville is the next Goa 2: Electric Boogaloo, Sihanoukville is the next Goa III: Beyond Thunderdome

Made by small hands

Roadside bread seller near Sihanoukville, Cambodia

I am always reluctant about taking photographs of children even though they play an integral part in the production, sale and capture of Cambodian food. In part, it’s a consent issue. Partly, it is because I don’t find children interesting and don’t want to despoil my camera of valuable bytes with them. Thankfully, there are more nuanced approaches to capturing kids at work, such as the upcoming exhibit by Jerry Redfern, the other half of Rambling Spoon. He is exhibiting his shots of working Cambodian children, opening at 6:30 pm, 10 February 2007 at Le Popil Gallery in Phnom Penh. Sneak preview at his website.

Above shot is mine, from a roadside stop on the outskirts of Sihanoukville.

Continue reading Made by small hands

Knee deep in the dead fish

Cambodia’s national fermented fish condiment, prahok, has just come into season with the annual explosion of riel fish numbers. To honour the occasion, AFP have published their insight (and a few top photos). The Ministry of Fish’s head honcho, Nao Thouk, sums up the situation with typically Khmer verve:

“Prahok is the taste of Cambodia. If there is no prahok, we are not Cambodians. Prahok is the Khmer identity,” says Nao Thouk, director of the agriculture ministry’s fisheries department.

“It is like butter or cheese for Westerners,” he adds, explaining that some 70,000 to 80,000 tonnes of prahok are produced each year between December and March, when thousands swarm to the rivers.

See: Got Fish?

Cambodian food in New York and in the seat pocket beneath your tray table.

Village Voice have just reviewed Kampuchea Noodle Bar, currently New York’s sole Cambodian restaurant. Their initial thoughts on the subtleties of the 17 dollar bowl of khtieav with filet mignon:

..it’s a bit dull, partly due to the prim slices of filet flung into its depths. Use fatty stew beef, dude, and cook the fuck out of it!

They also serve up a disturbing reminder at how bad a foreign take on fish amok can really be:

For years the city’s only Cambodian restaurant was Fort Greene’s South East Asian Cuisine, offering lots of Thai and Chinese dishes, but only a handful of uniquely Cambodian ones, including the amazing amok (a gingery mousse of pureed chicken)

A recent New York Times article suggests that Fort Greene’s Cambodian Cuisine will reopen in Manhattan (1664 Third Avenue (93rd Street)) in about a month for all the pureed chicken mousse you can pour into your gaping maw. Perhaps they’ll also have Cambodian cuisine for you to try.

In other unrelated news, Bangkok Airway’s inflight magazine Fah Thai gives a top ten list of fancy restaurants in Cambodia and they’ve done well to highlight my favourite Sicilian in Phnom Penh, Luigi from Le Duo.

Cheers to John, Austin for the tip off.

See also: Cambodian food on the LES

Luxe does Cambodia (and Laos)

Suddenly unable to differentiate between two entire nations and a single city, Luxe City Guides have just released a guide concatenating Cambodia and Laos. The official guide of the Wallpaper* set has obviously decided that these two nations do not have enough opulence to fill their requisite two A4 sides of $9 folding guidebook.

I was hoping to pitch for Luxe’s Phnom Penh next time I was out of work, but it looks like I’ve missed that boat full of luxury cash.

See: Luxe City Guides at Amazon.

Cambodian Ministry of Tourism welcomes food tourists

Tourist season seems to be hotting up in Phnom Penh, or at least, more people seem to be wearing daypacks and standing on street corners, ineffectively using their Lonely Planet to swat at the emergent swarm of informal motorcycle-taxi drivers. The Cambodian Ministry of Tourism, realising that Cambodian food may attract tourists rather than repel them has added a few recipes to their website. From their fish amok instructions:

  • Break the coconut fruit, squeeze the nut to get its milk by making the phase-one milk and phase-two milk
  • Cut the ripe bell pepper into two
  • Pour half of the phase-one coconut milk into a frying pan to cook until it turns a litter brown
  • Then, put into the pan the spices and the mash mixture, and stir it up
  • Add the phase-two milk and turn off the cooking gas after the solution becomes cooked and dry enough

In this instance, a Cambodian ministry’s heart is in the right place, but their translator’s mind isn’t.

See: Ministry of Tourism’s Cambodian Recipes

On Literature

Phnom Penh is blessed with a handful of good secondhand bookstores which have managed to allay my initial fear in Phnom Penh that I would run out of anything worthwhile to read. Chea Sopheap, Cambodia’s only nuclear physicist fanboy and owner of Bohr’s Books gets profiled in today’s Telegraph (UK)

“I started from zero. I left my job and spent my time buying book stocks here and there from leaving expats with savings made over the previous three years. I built up a stock of about 600 titles at home. I opened my own second-hand bookshop two years ago, and now I have 4,000 titles in stock.”

While on the marginally food-related subject of literature, Bohr’s worthy rival, D’s Books has a grand sale this weekend.