Lol no clue, ask @CS04 who has apparently lived there. I’m not even sure how I’d characterize it from what I’ve had; there are some similarities to Vietnamese food but it’s definitely distinct and you wouldn’t mistake one for the other. Our favorite dish was basically a salad with super tender chunks of marinated beef but lots of good soups and noodle dishes as well.
That sounds fun though, I hear Laos and Cambodia are both incredibly beautiful and inexpensive and the people are supposedly quite friendly although my last update was from a friend who visited years and years ago.
Fish Amok is probably the most well known dish, its a coconut fish curry and very tasty. The other curries are decent too, but noticeably creamier and less spicy than Thai curries. Beef Lok Lak, which is a beef stir fry in a brown sauce, is always a winner. They’ve got some good noodle soups, I like the sweet and sour one, somlor machu, but there’s a few different types. If you ever want noodles for breakfast they love eating a pork noodle dish called kuy teav.
A specialty from the Kampot province is Kampot pepper crab, if you see it on a menu it’s definitely worth ordering. Kampot peppercorns are super tasty and I highly recommend buying a bag to take home. And as Mjiggy mentioned the beef salad is called lap, really good for an appetizer. Chive/scallion pancake things are solid snack if you see any of those vendors.
I don’t love Cambodian food, it’s certainly not as good as Thai or Vietnamese food, but it’s got it’s moments. Unfortunately the general populace is just too poor to be eating much high quality food regularly. Some restaurants like Malis, Romdeng, and Friends do some more tourist oriented, higher end, creative Cambodian dishes, although no idea what the food scene is like anymore post covid. One thing that’s nice about Phnom Penh is that it’s crawling with expats from all over the place so the international food scene is surprisingly impressive. Strong French influence as well, lots of French pastry shops. A place called Khema Pasteur used to have all you can eat breakfast for $12 and it was the nuts, go there if you want a fancy breakfast! And go to Russian Market if you want to eat breakfast how the locals eat :)
Yea, I only really got into noodles for breakfast after teaching in small town China, and it took me a couple months before I could warm up to the idea. The place next to me would hand cut the noodles right in front of you and put them in a spicy sauce, it was actually pretty damn good and cost like 50c.
This is a pretty great look at the current state of TX BBQ and what you need to do to be on top. It’s also a really well made documentary that’s simply enjoyable to watch.
I found Goldee’s through Meat Church’s “Meat the Masters” series (great episode). I really can’t get enough of Meat Church. His YouTube content is incredible, both in production quality and in actual subject matter. I’m going to take a shot at Meat Church’s Beef Dino Ribs on Sunday.
Zik got me thinking about BBQ now. I made this Beef Brisket a few weeks ago, following Meat Church’s guidance. I have a pellet smoker, and used Oak pellets and a smoke tube full of supplemental pellets. Was able to get ~4 hours out of the smoke tube, which I think made the difference in flavor.
It’s kind of surprising, but Franklin is the best meal I’ve ever had. Not sure if it was a product of being hungover, but I had it 6-7 years ago and have never been the same.
Matt Pittman (Meat Church guy) basically says exactly this about Dino Ribs, which are just large format beef short ribs.
He goes so far as to explicitly say in the video I linked above that Dino Ribs are even better than Brisket, due to the difficult nature of cooking Brisket and the fact that the Ribs are bone-in.
Second picture is a pretty rare dish called Fatteh. It is chickpeas/hummus with yogurt, chickpea cooking water, samna (arabic ghee) sirloin, pita croutons and pomegranate.
Third dish is called Aarayes which is minced meat seasoned somewhere between kebab and burger stuffed in pita bread and grilled with lots of lamb fat (i waited for 10 seconds and my nephews took 3/4 of the dish)
Fourth dish was fava beans and fried eggs cooked in samna
Fifth is baklava with the mastic ice cream.
Sixth dish is Malabi. Arabic Pannacota if you will
Expertly prepared fried chicken is pretty hard to top. That’s probably #1 for me. The problem is that most fried chicken that’s available is just a mediocre version of what it could be.
