Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
street hawkers. Each stall usually has its own speci-
ality, and you can order from any stall in the market
irrespective of where you're sitting. When you've
finished, you pay the stall closest to you for the
whole lot and they'll sort out the money among
themselves.
Noodle shops and cheap restaurants can be
found all over town centres and are especially
plentiful around markets and transport stops.
Noodle shops
(
haang geautieuv
) open around
5.30am for the breakfast trade, serving various
noodle soups, along with dumplings and rice
porridge in the larger establishments. By 9/10am
they turn into
coffee shops
, serving hot and cold
coffee and tea, as well as soft drinks and fresh
coconuts, until they close at around 4/5pm.
Cheap restaurants
(
haang bai
) are recognizable
by a row of pots set out on a table out front,
containing the day's food - not dissimilar to
Cambodian home cooking. To find out what's on
offer, lift the lids and peer inside; the dishes you have
chosen will be served to you in separate bowls
along with a plate of rice. Food in these places is not
only pretty decent but also invariably good value at
around $1-1.50 per portion - similar in price to
eating at a market stall - inclusive of rice and iced
tea, a jug of which is kept replenished at the table.
Tourist restaurants
across the country serve up
a generic range of international cuisine - pizzas,
pasta, burgers, salads, sandwiches and simple
grilled meat and fish dishes, all executed with
varying levels of authenticity and success. Phnom
Penh and Siem Reap also have a decent range of
more upmarket restaurants specializing in French,
Italian, Indian, Thai, Japanese and other leading
international cuisines. At the other end of the scale,
eating possibilities in smaller towns and
rural areas
can be quite restricted, and in the evenings you
may be hard pushed to find anything more than a
bowl of instant noodles.
Khmers tend to eat early by Western standards. In
the provinces, especially, don't expect to find
anywhere open after 9pm, and some places close
even earlier.
In general, there's no need to
book in advance
,
even to eat at expensive restaurants - although
we've given telephone numbers throughout the
Guide, so you could choose to call ahead during
busy periods for popular spots.
MARKET DELICACIES
Cambodians eat just about everything,
including
insects
. In the markets you'll
see big trays of grasshoppers, beetles and
crickets, usually fried, sold by the bag and
eaten like sweets;
snails
are also a
popular market-stall snack.
Spiders
are a
speciality of Skuon (see box, p.28), while
fried
snakes
are also a common sight, as
are tiny sparrows (
jarb jeyan)
, and other
small
birds
, deep-fried and served whole,
complete with tiny shrivelled head and
claws.
Frogs
, meanwhile, are commonly
used in stir-fries both in local markets and
upmarket restaurants.
about any combination of ingredients can be
ordered: chicken, pork or frogs' legs might be stir-
fried with ginger, spring onions and garlic; prawn or
chicken with basil leaves. Rice or noodles can
themselves be stir-fried with chopped pork, beef,
crab or vegetables, with an egg scrambled in or
fried and served on top. Stir-fried sweet-and-sour
dishes are also available, usually made with fish or
pork - though you can ask for a vegetarian version
- and flavoured with a combination of ingredients
including pineapple, onion and either green or red
tomatoes.
Stews and curries
are often available at market
stalls and cheap restaurants. Cambodian
stews
are
usually based on a light stock (with beef or fish),
complemented by bitter gourd or field melon; it's
not unusual for them to contain hard-boiled eggs.
Curries
, usually made with beef, are only mildly
spicy and generally quite dry.
Smoky,
charcoal-grilled
chicken and fish are
available everywhere from roadside stalls to restau-
rants: fish is served with a dip of grated green
mango, chilli, garlic and fish sauce; chicken with
salad garnish and a sweet chilli sauce.
Khmer cuisine features two kinds of soup:
somlar
,
freshly prepared to order and cooked
quickly, and
sop
, based on a stock that has been
simmering for a while. One of the commonest
soups on restaurant menus is
somlar jerooet
, a clear
soup made from either chicken or fish and cooked
with coconut, lemongrass and chives.
Breakfast
For
breakfast
, Cambodians often eat rice with
either fried chicken or fried pork, served
with sliced cucumber and pickled vegetables,
and a side bowl of clear soup. Also popular in
What to eat
Many Cambodian dishes are variations on
Chinese
equivalents and are
stir-fried
in a wok to order. Just
