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Behind this stall is a vendor of sweet treats. Look for a steamer full of pale yellow cakes in banana leaf cups. Made with palmyra palm fruits and coconut milk, they're moist and spongy with a lovely hint of banana-ish tartness.
Where else for street food in Siem Reap? A row of shops on a side street way down the river; you might need to hire a tuk-tuk or ride a bike to get there (or be willing to walk 15 to 20 minutes from the center of town). All serve various incarnations of the chicken-noodle combo.
Our favorite was the dish in the opening photo, a bowl of cool rice vermicelli topped with chunks of crispy chicken-filled spring rolls and shredded chicken meat. Reminiscent of Vietnamese bun thit nuong, each bowl holds a bit of pickle and fish sauce-y sweetish dressing at the bottom. Add a dab of Cambodia's ubiquitous chili sauce, mix and eat. These places also serve fresh rice paper-wrapped salad rolls, light on meat and heavy on crunchy lettuce and herbs.
No, Cambodia isn't a street food bonanza. It's streets offer a lot of frankly funky stuff. But there's good street eats too. They are there (but not everywhere) -- if you want to look for them.
The pork/chicken rice/congee lady is at the very corner of Psar Chas prepared food section, right in the center of the market. Which corner? I couldn't tell you. But you'll know her when you see her. If you get there past 9am you might not see her at all.
The cool rice vermicelli stalls is on a street perpendicular to the river north of the center of town. I drew it on a map, which you can see here.
2012.08.03
A Saving Grace in Sri Em
I hate wasting time, money, and especially, a meal. And that's how I felt about our brief sojourn earlier this week in Sri Em, a pretty near nothingball town in northern Cambodia whose claim to fame is its proximity to the mountaintop temple complex of Preah Vihear.
We hired a taxi for the 3-hour drive from Siem Reap and left at 11:30am, figuring that this would give us an afternoon and a morning at Preah Vihear. But by the time we'd checked into our clean but down-and-out guesthouse in Sri Em -- 45 minutes to an hour from the top of the mountain -- it was 3:30 or so. No point heading up now, our driver told us, since the complex closes at 5. So there we were in Sri Em with nothing to do but find a way to pass the time until morning.
So we walked, up the characterless stretch of highway connecting our guesthouse to the crossroads that comprises Sri Em town. There's a huge military presence around and at Preah Vihear, and Sri Em has the feel of a town built to service soldiers. We found karaoke restaurants, questionable "hotels", mobile phone stores. We found a market. As market lovers we do not judge markets harshly, but Sri Em's market was dismal.
We walked in, stepping over squishy mud puddles and past shallow rattan baskets filled with fly-covered lurid pink sausages, past uncovered tubs of prahok and fruit vendors with absolutely nothing of interest to offer. We wandered down one aisle and up another, and ended up in front of a charcoal-fired barbecue tended by a grandmother and her granddaughter, its grill covered with blackening banana leaf parcels.
There was nothing -- not a thing -- in that market to stir the appetite. Quite the opposite, in fact. By the time we smelled the charcoal smoke I felt my stomach on the verge of churning. But whatever was in those banana leaves smelled good, really good. We bought a few and unwrapped them then and there.
They held a typical southeast Asian snack: coconut rice wrapped around a banana. But oh, what a version of this unremarkable snack so easily found all over the region! The rice logs were especially rich with coconut milk. They'd been left on the grill long enough to form a slightly sweet crusty, crispy-chewy exterior. Inside, the rice was still soft, and it enclosed a sweet-tart banana that the heat of the grill had reduced to the silky texture of grilled eggplant. We ate them up, and swooned, and bought more.
The next morning, at fog-shrouded Preah Vihear, we found Sri Em's other saving grace. Our overnight there gave us two hours alone at the site. By the time other visitors began arriving in noisy droves we were heading back down the mountain.
For more photographs from Preah Vihear visit Dave's photography blog, here.
In Sri Em, we stayed at Som Rak guesthouse. The food at the attached restaurant isn't bad, but it isn't particularly good either -- and it's stupid expensive, especially in comparison with the deliciousness served up at this Cambodian restaurant in Siem Reap. If you go, plan to arrive in Sri Em by noon (it's 3-3.5 hours from Siem Reap by taxi) so you can visit Preah Vihear twice (U$5 per person per visit if you go up the mountain by motorbike). Arrange to arrive at PV in the morning before it officially opens (this can be done for a small price -- consult your taxi or moto driver). We were at the ticket office at 7am and if I had it to do over again I would aim for 6:30.
2012.07.30
Skewered in Siem Reap
The ultimate skewer of barbecued beef? Perhaps.
Around five in the afternoon charcoal smoke begins to rise from dozens of grills, scenting the air all over Siem Reap. Cambodians love a barbecue, it seems -- there's an entire street devoted to restaurants serving up charred protein (chicken, beef, offal, seafood), sides and beer. Locals call it "Khmer Pub Street", after Pub Street, an infamous downtown strip of dance clubs and bars in which young foreign travellers pass their evenings.
A couple evenings ago we dipped our toe into the local BBQ scene at a corner joint on the non-Pub Street side of the river. Picture it: a middle-aged woman seated on a stool behind a long low grill crowded with skewers of red meat. A packed house every single night, from five-thirty onward. An intoxicating scent -- smoky, sweet, meaty -- that begins to tickle your nose when you're still half a block away.
The meat on those skewers is local beef and beef liver, marinated in beef stock and perhaps Cambodian palm sugar. The strips of beef are alternated with bits of pork fat to keep the meat moist, and both it and the liver are skewered in such a way that they form waves along the wooden stick rather than lying flat. The result, for the beef at least (we passed on the liver) is that while some parts of the meat become black and charred and crispy-crusty, others cook no further than medium or medium-rare. Each piece of beef is a bit like a bite of a thick char-grilled steak, a mix of textures and donenesses. It's brilliant.
That's not all. After the skewers come off the grill they're annointed with a mixture of (I'm guessing here) soy sauce and with palm sugar -- a little salt, a little sweet (and I do mean "a little" -- palm sugar isn't as sweet as cane sugar), a little extra smoky caramel flavor to further play up the sweet smokiness the grill gives the meat.
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