I must admit I didn't fall in love with Cambodian food. It has all the flavour I love - garlic, lime juice, chillies, fish sauce - but I found something lacking... not sure if I can put my finger on it. But perhaps I wasn't looking beyond the tourist mould?I'll have give it another go at some point.
Nhom kra-oa ch'rook - lotus root salad from the FCC Angkor hotel restaurant - the Angkor Kitchen. An interesting dish on the menu but sadly uninspiring on the plate. According to the menu, there was supposed to be caramelised pork, smoked shrimp, fried shallots in a hot and sour dressing. The chunks of lotus root did come with beansprouts, dried (rather than smoked?) shrimp and nuggets of .. dried-out pork. Tang came from the squeeze of lime which came with the dish but other than that, the flavours were flat - if any at all.
Apparently the 'national dish' of Cambodia (up there with Amok), the Angkor Kitchen's version of Lok Lak Saich Go was delicious!Well marinated, tender slices of beef in a sweet, salty 'Cambodian bbq' with a fried egg on top served with a steamed rice and a little serving of 'mixed sauce'. Where lok lak tasted bland and almost .. lifeless at the other places I tried it, the flavours were bursting forth here with the other important factor of some very good meat. And here is where my problem probably lies... the need of flavour. A tongue brought up on too much of the good life? :) Pricewise, this dish (jazzed up for foreign taste buds?) did set me back a whole lot more than if we had headed to a local restaurant down the road. What the heck... I loved this it!
The others picked an assortment of non-Khmer dishes. Here is a very bad photo (sorry!) of the grilled sirloin with dauphinoise potato, green beans and optional sauce of mushroom and something else which I cannot remember.
The Chinese poached chicken with lime and coriander rice dumplings, spring onion and ginger sambal. I don't think my mother was terrible impressed with the dumplings as she ended ordering a separate bowl of rice - which in Angkor Kitchen terms was the Steamed Battambang rice with roasted coconut (not pictured).
I've been racking my brains for the name of this restaurant but I still can't remember it. But it's located 5 doors down from Khmer Kitchen on the same street. First up, Banana Flower Salad. I know the Malays at home eat the banana flower but I don't believe I've ever had any. This was rather yummy with lots of herbs and other crunchy vegetables. Rather like a Thai style salad.
For those who are totally indecisive on which Amok (normally fish steamed in a thick coconut based curry but with the hordes of tourists, one can have this dish with different meats or go vegetarian) to go for, have the Amok Degustation. The five little banana leaf wrapped parcels contain fish, chicken, pork, beef and vegetables. Interesting concept but after a while it gets a little boring sampling bits of meat, then fish, then a bit of veg - all cooked in the same sauce. For 6 people, we did have a whole lot more dishes but I soon learnt that every restaurant we went to in Cambodia and Vietnam had pretty dim lighting, which meant plenty of very fuzzy photos! Yup, these were the best of the lot! :(
Dessert! We must be truly indecisive people :) One of the desserts up was the Sorbet Degustation. This was definitely more interesting than the Amok Degustation! Sorbet flavours from the top: lime (which was lip smacking-ly sour ... lovely!!), passion fruit (not a favourite of mine as I'm not keen on the fruit), coconut (rich), mango (yummy!) and pear (pretty good).
Grilled Bananas with a palm sugar and coconut caramel sauce was very tasty. The palm sugar gave the caramel a very tasty twist and the coconut cream made it nicely thick and luscious. The bananas were the little ones and full of flavour but I did get a unripe piece - yuck! I hate the texture and taste of bananas that haven't fully ripen (I actually prefer my bananas with nice big brown spots with any lingering green bits long gone).
Breakfast on our last day in Cambodia. As part of our B&B deal with the hotel, we got to choose from a selected breakfast menu. I chose the breakfast panini with scrambled eggs, bacon and drizzled with lemon oil. A little oily but very tasty. Although I like lots of flavour in my food, I really dislike the strong smell/taste of pork. I say this with some embarrassment as I was brought up on a strong diet of pork (the Chinese love their pork!) and I do love it but just not all pork dishes. I tend to stay away from pork chops, pork scratchings and now...the bacon pictured above. Thickly sliced, it was bacon in all it's pork-y glory but just a little too much for me :)
A bowl of mixed fruit with cubes of watermelon, pineapple, apple and dragonfruit (which I find .. I'm tempted to say pointless ... but let's instead go with bland and tasteless). Unless it's cut up into tiny bits and mixed in with other fruit, I'm not inclined to eating it. Jo, on the other, rather enjoyed dragonfruit and I gave her mine.
Chocolate Brownie from The Blue Pumpkin cafe in Siem Reap town right by the market square. It was a nice brownie with a touch of coffee coming through (too much as addicted chocoholic Jo proclaimed- who unsurprisingly dislikes coffee). On our first day in Cambodia, we wandered down to the cafe and Edwin (another of our party) bought a croissant which was oh sooo good! But the day we went back to stock up on goodies for our trip to Vietnam, the displayed baked goods were swarmed with flies and I wasn't going to take a chance and opted for a pre-packaged brownie.
Touted as a bit of a Hanoi institution, this one dish restaurant was high on the list of must trys when we were in the city. Jo and I had already made it across Indochina in one piece by ourselves (the rest having left us to our own devices for the comfort of KL). We even managed to get from Hanoi airport to the hotel safely (not terribly hard since we had already arranged for a car beforehand - thank heavens for tripadvisor.com!) but as soon as stepped out of our hotel, we were almost tripping over ourselves in panic :) Perhaps we should have wandered out when it was still light but the comfort of the air-condition and internet in the room was just too much of a lure to stay in. But we made it out eventually and walked straight into the chaos that makes Hanoi's Old Quarter a gem. Motorcycles coming from every direction, pavements blocked by parked motorbikes, incessant hooting .... ohhh a nightmare, especially if you've just arrived from the sleepy backwater that is Siem Reap!
Grumpy and hungry, Jo and I stumbled upon Cha Ca Street and a few feet away from dinner! The restaurant is tiny but we were ushered up a flight of creaky stairs (it creaked so badly I didn't know if I should just leg it up or close my eyes, pray really hard, hold my weight and creep up very, VERY slowly). The floorboards upstairs weren't any better but hey... if it manages to hold so many people for this long, I guess I really don't have much to worry about. Seated, we were pushed a piece of paper that said something along the lines of 'We only serve one dish Cha Ca' along with the price - which I can't remember. Something laughably low if you have foreign cash to spend.
Within minutes of us nodding to the man who had to make sure we really did want to eat Cha Ca, a little charcoal fired stove was brought to us with a pan of sizzling fish in oil. We also got a plate of bun (cold vermicelli noodles), peanuts, chopped red chillies, nuoc cham (a dipping sauce made with lime, fish sauce, sugar, chili and water) and two huge piles of herbs. The man then starts stirring our fish that is still sizzling madly in the saffron tempered oil while throwing lots of herbs in from the first pile he brought over of mainly spring onions and dill. After a few stirs, the man seems satisfied the herbs had cooked down and points to the noodles and condiments he brought over earlier and then to an empty bowl. That's our cue to tuck in. Noodles in, peanuts, chillies, herbs (coriander, mint, basil and even more dill this time), fish, lots of oil and nuoc nam over the top. 
It was good and it was interesting... but dare I say it? I over-anticipated this place and it let me down. This is awful... I sound terrible but I did really want it to be very good. It was quite an experience and really quite fun but ohhhh the dampening of the spirit ........!
We started our meal with steamed vegetarian Khmer dumplings and some fried spring rolls (haha no, I don't think they are particularly Cambodian but we just couldn't resist!). The skin for the dumplings, made from rice flour, were on the thick side and the inside was stuffed with fried garlic chives (gau choy in Cantonese, which has flat leaves). The flavour was good but it was a little too doughy for my liking. The spring rolls were the standard sort you find anywhere and nothing to write home about.
The mains on the menu were meant to be shared and they cook most dishes to your choice of meat, seafood or vegetables. I suppose this makes it all very flexible but not very traditional. We had Khmer curry with pork - a thin coconut based stew, heavily flavoured with cinnamon, with thin slices of pork, chunks of potato, carrots and sweet potato. It was rather good and we could smell this cooking as we walked into the restaurant earlier. Behind it the Khmer curry in the picture was the fish stew with coconut milk, which (judging from my memory of it) wasn't particularly memorable.
On the way out of the restaurant, we saw this woman selling roasted sweet potatoes from her little push cart. I believe she also sold roasted bananas. 
