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.
