Why Not Cambodian Tonight?

There's a feature on Cambodian food in Salon that I found really interesting. I love SE Asian food, but I don’t remember being impressed with Khmer food when I was in Cambodia, but it makes me want to re-evaluate the food. To be honest I was only in Cambodia for five days and most of that in Siam Reap for Angkor Wat. Perhaps it's time to revisit Cambodia in general.

Here's the intro to the article:

You wouldn't know it from looking at me -- perched upon a wooden stool window-side in the Kampuchea Noodle Bar, on a trendy street in Manhattan's Lower East Side -- but I'm eating my way to the past. I'm hunched over a bowl of something named Phnom Penh katiev, and the long white strands of rice noodle are dripping off my chopsticks back into a cloudy broth. Let it splatter. I'm fishing for the shrimp, lapping them up and wondering if the tingling on my tongue is a hint of MSG.

This is New York, food capital of the world, where you should be able to get whatever you want, whenever you want. But I'm just not finding it. Kuy thiew (koy-TEA-oo), not "katiev," is breakfast in Cambodia. I came here hoping to be transported back to the corner of Street 130 and Preah Ang Eng Boulevard, downstairs from my river-view apartment in Phnom Penh. There, under the rotating fans at Rthy's sidewalk noodle stand, bright pink plastic chairs are arranged around bright blue plastic tables, each with a can of metal spoons and plastic chopsticks in the center. The clovers of sauces are so dark red and corrosive and oily that not even the 90-degree heat can spoil them.

In New York, transplanted Hong Kong hands have a couple of Chinatowns to choose from. Colombians can head out to Queens for an oblea caramel wafer and yucca bread under the elevated train tracks. Eastern Europeans longing for a borscht can ride the F train to Brighton Beach. West Africans have the Bronx, North Africans have the East Village -- and even the Uighurs, the Sephardim of the Silk Road, can find home cooking out in Rego Park. But for Cambodians (and nostalgic travelers like me), a taste of home remains elusive.

Last year, such was my longing, I made the trip to Lowell, Mass., just to order a plate of pliah, marinated beef salad, and sit under posters of pop stars in silk dresses and whiteface. By the odd topology of refugee migration, a quarter of Lowell's 105,000 citizens are Cambodian. (One grocer told me he stocks his vegetable counter with the help of a Cambodian immigrant in Florida who found the Mekong Delta-like Everglades perfect for growing tropical greens.) "Is this how it's supposed to be?" my uninitiated companion asked about the pliah, gazing around the Formica-clad dining room with an expression approaching horror. "This is it," I said, chomping on a dangly piece of cold tripe. The acid from the Asian coriander bit through my teeth. "This is right."

Over the past three decades, the West has fallen in love with the cuisines of Thailand, southern China, Vietnam and Malaysia, even Burma (for its barbecue), but somehow, Cambodia's food has slipped through the cracks. It has been nearly 30 years since "before Pol Pot" became "after." Two million tourists converged on Cambodia last year to see the temples at Angkor and what's left of Phnom Penh's French colonial grace. A generation of refugees resettled in America and France and had children of their own. Slowly, Khmer cultural heritage is being restored, protected, re-created. A no-fly zone covers the temples at Angkor, to keep engine blasts from shaking delicate foundations. The nation's Royal Ballet has trained a new troupe of hyper-flexible ingenues to perform on world tours. And Khmer shadow puppetry, called sbaek thom, or "big skin," now carries UNESCO's seal as one of 89 "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity." Why not Khmer food?

Comments

[Captain]

For quite a while Angkor Wat was the only Cambodian restaurant in Tokyo. I don't know if that is still the case. It is in Yoyogi (on a side street in the direction of Yamate-Dori). I went once but was rudely turned away by the manager because my party of two wasn't big enough. He wanted at least three, I guess. It wasn't even a Friday or Saturday. Stupid. So I never went back.

[MC]

I checked and Angkor wat is still around, and there's one in Takanababa as well. I'm going to try and check one of them out tonight.

[Captain]

Good luck! Let me know how it went. Great to meet you last week.