For the most part food here is a mix of neighboring countries Thailand and Vietnam with some Chinese thrown in the mix too. Khmer food itself is pretty good, with an interesting rotten fish paste sauce called prahok, which can range from wow that doesn't taste like fish at all and is quite pleasant to holy shit I'm pretty sure I'm eating rotten fish. Which as most with a western palate can imagine us pretty fucking awful. Otherwise there is a lot of peasant style food, all stewed together and served with rice, or grilled up and served with rice. Which by the way I am beginning to crave on a daily basis. It gets served with every meal here:
Breakfast-pork and rice or rice noodles with weird sauce as I call it or rice porridge with chickeny bits and chicken blood chunks.
Lunch: stewed or grilled critters with rice, rice noodle soup, rice noodle salad, or maybe a KFC smacker if you are feeling big-time.
Dinner: repeat the other option from lunch that you didn't eat yet.
Now living in the burbs, we don't have much in the way of expat fancy spots with French culinary heart stoppers like Croque Monsiuers but we do have plenty of the local eats. Which can be good and/or bad. Or really good then uh oh, maybe that was bad after all. Playing a daily game of the tummy wobbles is a constant. It all depends on where the stuff comes from, and how fresh, as a lot of local eateries don't have fancy refrigeration devices, but rather a block of ice keeping the critter of the day fresh.
So with all of this in mind here are a couple of my favorite eatin holes that I have found, and even a few of the lovely ladies that serve me the goodness, and make sure my tummy wobbles right.
Lady 1- Street Noodle Lady
Found this lovely lady my first week here when I was still jet lagged and not quite my freshest. When starving and being shown around town, I asked a couple of barkeeps where they eat(note to all, always ask the barkeep where they eat or what to eat if the bar serves food. It is usually the best recommendation you will ever get. Right Wolfeyes?) and they looked out the front door and said "yup she is here. Just go to the corner and see the lady in the cart, its good.". Or something like that, I didn't have a tape recorder and y'all know how quickly I forget stuff. Anyways, at $1 per plate and as of now probably $20 spent here, this moto bike with a mean street chef keeps me full on the reg. She's got two options on this rig, noodles with a concoction of sauces some street meat, some greens, and a fried egg and fried rice. Both are good, but the noodles kill it for sure.
No food truck needed, we already got a noodle-moto.
Lady 2- Spring Roll Lady
This gem of a lamb works at the Russian market and serves $1 worth of veggie spring rolls with noodles, peanuts, sauces and bit of sasitude. Even when I am there and I don't actually eat at her joint, she know me enough to suggest that I at least need a couple of spring rolls even after I have just eateded. She is good and knows my weakness, which I commend her on.
She chefs up a mean batch of goodness filled with rice noodles, herbs, and scissored up spring rolls with mix of five or so sauces, one of which looks like milk but is definitely not, and pow. Welcome to Flavor Country. Population You.
Would you be able to tell this lady no? Didn't think so.
Put all these together and you get something pretty amazing.
Lady 3-Noodle Soup Lady
This babe hangs right next door to the spring roll lady, which gives me the toughest daily decision when cruisin the market for lunch. But often times she wins out with her noodle soupy yumins. Now at first I played it safe and ate stuff like the chickeny bits. It was good. But then after a getting good at the game of street meat, I started venturing into the bits and pieces. And believe you me, was I missing out. Never did I realize that insides could be so good. Typically, my only foray into this field was with menudo, and to be honest, this stuff kicks it in the ding dong. There are some special techniques that they know on this side of the world which makes you say wow. This really doesn't taste like the inside of a pig, and keeps the chew factor at a minimum. Add in some healthy dose of your choice of noodles, different types of chili, and some greens and pow there you have it. Pig part brothy goodness ready for consumption. Extra bonus here is that my roommate can get soup without meat, which is usually quite tough to do, but allows for equitable lunches for all while on a busy work day.
Insides soup for the Cambodian soul.
*This is not this noodle soup lady, she was on vacation when I began this post, so I have this artist rendition of another soup lady, who is also quite phenomenal, instead.
Lady 4- Saveurn (SA- voon) AKA our Cambodian Madre
Where do I start with her. Saveurn is our neighbor and house caretaker. She also happens to run the local fruit and veg stand right about 50 feet from our front door. She spends half of her day selling fresh produce to local passer-bys on via moto and the local community who cruise to her shop to get whatever stuff they need for the day. The second half of the day she works for us taking care of the house, office, rooms, kitchen, everything. Now not only do each of us who live in the house frequent her shop on the daily to pick up stuff, my go to is some greens and stuff to make a $.15 pack of noodles into magic or mangoes for a late afternoon snack, but she has now figured out what each of us like, and brings us green mangoes and other interesting fruits just about every other day. Have you ever munched a green mango with homemade chile, salt, sugar, and dried shrimp? If not I suggest cruise to the Safeways bud, pick up a couple and blow a hole in what your mind once thought was delicious.
Now if that wasn't enough, she also cooked us up an amazing Khmer New Year dinner at her casa, and I have been lucky on occasion to get some homemade lunches before she cruises over to our place in the afternoon. I usually just play dumb and leisurely stroll by around 11:45 to pick up a snack, and then hey what have you, pork and veggies with rice? Well I was just gonna eat a snack, but ok ok I will try a bit and stay for lunch. I think she might be catching onto my game, but I don't think she minds at all. In fact I have been negotiating some cooking classes for me with her to learn some of the secrets of turning chicken hearts into, well, more edible chicken hearts. From her estimation its gonna cost me about $3 to cook dinner for the whole crew, not bad at all. So Savuern, if you have wifi in your spot and happen to have been playing a funny game pretending you don't know English this whole time and are reading this, "MUCHAS GRACIAS SENORITA!!"
Sa-VOOOOOOOOON!!!!!!!!
Creating some Khmer New Year decorations.
Well this was just a bit about some of how I keep myself fed properly while over here. There is also some decent home cooking that goes on as well, but honestly getting full for $1 often beats me cooking in 100 degree heat. As I said before, you sweat just about doing anything. Writing a blog. Yup.
Sometimes I just end up eating Gollum Fishes. My preciousssss.
If you count there are about 5 different animal products going into one of these sambos.
Which of these two ended up in my tummy? Maybe both?
Centipede, Snake, and who thefuckknows wine. Guaranteed to make you see something.
Next Time: Who has 300 pictures of temples. This Guy! Thanks Khmer New Year!
Li Hi!
