AsiaLIFE

Ever wondered why some places are jam packed with Cambodians after dark, feasting away on BBQ beef. AsiaLIFE visits one of the more popular local eating places. Words by Uli Schmidt

Sovanna BBQ, around the corner from Java – off Sihanouk on Street 21, is a place hard to miss after dark. The restaurant is packed most of the time from six onwards, with rarely a foreigner to be seen. Customers park their cars all over the pavement from one end of the street to the other, in double file where possible.

After two futile attempts after dark, we went at four o’clock, and the service was friendly and only moderately inefficient. The ambience is rustic, to say the least, in line with the food, which is cheap and served in generous portions. Grilled meat, offal, chicken etc. are the mainstay of the menu, which is only partly translated into Khmenglish. The menu also includes seafood, soups and local salads, and some wild things like baked honeycomb full of bee pupae.

We ordered grilled beef, which came with some tired looking raw vegetables and the usual salt, pepper and lime concoction (or prahoc sauce for the adventurous). The meat was local (obvious at US$2 a portion), quite tasty, not burned and only moderately tough. The grilled eel which followed was good, but, remarkable for Khmer cooking habits, slightly undercooked. Beef steamed with lemon came with Chinese kale and lots of garlic. It was more interesting in culinary terms then the rest, but, as with the shrimp and squid tom yum (US$4.50 USD) we had to finish the meal, it showed the cook’s exaggerated affinity to sugar.

Overall, the place is rather par for the course, with a few hundred similar establishments strewn all over the city.

Beer (Anchor and Tiger) is on draught and cheap. Those of our brethren who use food to fight last night’s hangover or prepare for the next one - while preparing for the next economic crisis at the same time - will find it an interesting option, as will those who also refuel rather than eat without a particular agenda. According to friends who ventured out later at night, there is a marked tendency towards charcoaling as time advances, the beer girls arrive and the service slumps. But for the usual evening crowds with their sights firmly on maximum alcohol consumption and food a justification for swilling away, this is apparently no deterrent. Neither would it be for many of my Antipodean, Anglophone and African friends. Their love for charred meat and cheap beer will not go unanswered here.

To the silent minority among the international community who eat to enjoy food and who have passed the initiation rites of eating local, this best kept secret may well be kept secret.


Sovanna BBQ, Street 21