AsiaLIFE

A few minutes out of town on the way to Siem Reap are a string of restaurants popular with Khmers, especially on Sunday afternoons. Marcus Burrows braves the traffic and tries some of them out.

Ever feel like you’ve been duped into a particularly lazy way of thinking widely held as fact by your peers? Khmer cuisine may well have been given an unfair bashing. Ask expats what they really think of Khmer cuisine and most will pull a sour face followed by a roll-out of the tongue. Well it’s time to lay that myth to rest. Over the Japanese Bridge and five minutes along the bustling road to Siem Reap is a delightful stretch of Khmer restaurants that boast the most diverse range of authentic Khmer cuisine, all in one district.

Stung Meas

The first restaurant in a long procession on the left is called Stung Meas. Walking through a simple outside café terrace of tables set among soursop trees, then past bubbling tanks full of catfish, eels, prawns and cages of talkative Mynah birds nibbling on red chillies, you arrive at what most people come for – dining out in the great outdoors.

Sturdy wooden runways on stilts stretch out over a vegetated lake, housing thatched large wooden dining huts. The air is full of birdsong. Its natural simplicity creates an intimate atmosphere of breezy serenity and calm. The best time to come is on Sunday afternoons when the chatter and laughter of Khmer families ring out from each of the sheltering huts. The service is friendly and attentive, although nobody speaks English, which really doesn’t seem to matter.

The menu has everything from goat, cow’s tongue, steamed eel, intestines, duck, lobster, prahok, shrimp, crab and fresh water fish. No prices are displayed, any enquiries are met with a shrug. Vegetarian options are somewhat limited down to soups. I plump for a glorious typo error ‘Sour Mined Fish’ (US$3.50 with US$.0.50 for rice) and I really have no idea what will show up, which is half the fun of it. A deep steaming bowl of grey broth- what it may lack in visual appeal it more than makes up for in taste and nourishment. Dense in flavour, many subtleties jostle for dominance. Lemon, perhaps a little too much salt, dandelion, burdock, crushed peanuts, spinach and plenty of white meaty flesh from the fresh fish, without a needle bone present. It’s delicious! I take my time with it, taking in the ambience as fish splash about in the lake underfoot. Accompanying it is a raw salad of raw cabbage, aubergine, cucumber and fresh herbs and as much rice as you need.

Star Restaurant

The Star Restaurant is the next port of call. Once past the traditional restaurant area, which includes a night entertainment stage for Khmer singers to croon their romantic ballads, extensive stilted runways of wood veer off into the lake. It’s a beautiful complex. Even larger in scope than Stung Meas, the gangways are supported by cement which makes it feel more secure and sturdier underfoot. The huts are large with little Swiss Family Robinson style curtains over the glassless windows. You dine on the varnished trunk of a tree. The wild panorama of the lake outside is truly impressive, so choose your hut wisely.

Staff explain that the lack of any prices displayed on the menu is due to market prices changing every day. The most popular dish with the locals is the grilled fish, which comes with the warning that it takes time.

Choices are even more eclectic here – fried pig brain with egg or crab, steamed black chicken Chinese herbal soup, “shar fine” (shark fin?), and fried white noodle with viscera. A French influence seems to be in play with titles such as shrimp gratin with cheese, lobster mayonnaise sauce and octopus sautéed provençale. Plenty of vegetarian options include a recommended watermelon soup.

I opt for the roast suckling pigeon. I imagine a plump fat bird roasting in an oven. When it arrives, I’m genuinely dismayed. Two tiny fragile hairless baby chicks, have been deep fried brown. It’s pitiful. To top it off there’s no muscle to bone ratio whatsoever. Just bones and beaks – it’s inedible – and at US$5 this is no bargain.

At least the fish is a healthy specimen that would have any fisherman proudly describing his catch to his wife that evening. Initially it tastes great and there’s plenty of flesh, although it could have used some flavouring. Other than a sprig of lemongrass hanging out of its mouth, like an old cigarillo, it’s devoid of any seasoning and ultimately rather bland for US$6.50.

Ta Ta Dome
From the road the Ta Ta Dome has the striking appearance of an other-worldly 70s Sci-Fi movie kitsch vision of the future, straight out of Logan’s Run. Lit blue at night, driving past, it’s always held a certain curiosity value.

The dome turns out to be a kid’s party area whilst the restaurant is an open-air arena with a live band on stage that no-one acknowledges. There’s a choice of different seating environments to dine in, none of which use the lake to any advantage.

The menu is again ripe with comic misunderstandings and devoid of prices. Crab eggs, duck feet shroud bean clay pot, boiled sweets with lobster, steamed sand, pork lip swoot and sour suc, mushroom and sea slug with duck feet in casserole and steamed prown fresh milk. It makes AsiaLIFE’s typos seem mundane.

The mixed seafood, vegetable and tofu claypot (US$7) is a sure-fire winner. Vegetables were á la denté with a healthy crunch, seafood portions were generous, squid was spot on and the tofu was fresh, creamy and flavoursome, cooked and served up in a pot of tasty gravy. It came with a mixed seafood fried rice (US$3.50) that was fit to burst with squid and prawn. Just goes to show that Khmer food can be really good after all.

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