We stuck five days in Cambodia onto our recent holiday, which we could pretend was to see Angkor Wat, but really was so Sophie could visit the Hero Rats. We did both, same morning, less than twelve hours after passing through border control, first the 5am tuk-tuk from the hotel to Angkor Wat to stand patiently by a wooden fence near some fly infested water to watch the sunrise above the temples, turning the sky pastel shades of pink, lilac, melon, and sky blue. We walked into the temples, got hot, almost fell down some stairs, went back to our tuk-tuk driver and repeated the process three more times at different parts of the temple grounds. It’s great if temples are your thing. Three hours later we’re at the rat place, me trying on t-shirts over the top of my sweaty t-shirt, Sophie beaming with the kind of joy that had successfully seen her take two boat trips, meet some pangolins, went to thirty-something cocktail bars, a couple of Michelin starred places, and now holding a giant fuck-off rat called Glenn who works six days a week sniffing out TNT to stop children or field workers from blowing their limbs off. The modern history of Cambodia is a tragic, tear-inducing mix of a dictator doing his utmost to strip the country of any intelligence and America bombing the shit out of it because borders are of no interest to them. How history is repeating itself. Anyhow, Glenn was a dude and it was brilliant if rats are your thing.
Cambodia was hot. Too hot. And if you want me to quantify how hot too hot is, then I would say thirty-eight all day long with the UV in the blue and a rating of eleven. We would walk three minutes, moan, stop for a coffee, risk getting the shits by asking for it iced, get the shits, go back and rest-up. We are not your intrepid explorers who do three days straight in temples, we are very much two people from Birmingham who like nice things, so, we went to Raffles once and then kept on going back. Sophie liked Raffles because they had a piano player who did requests, and served excellent cocktails at three times the price of everywhere else in fancy glasses. I liked Raffles because it is in the Grand Hotel d’Angkor and Bourdain went there, right in the early days of his TV career when his leitmotif was to eat weird shit in countries nobody else would go to and pretend he was off the blow when really he was doing more but at a much cheaper price than a life in New York. This particular episode saw him go to Phnom Penh when the war had just finished, eating some weird shit, get high, get a boat through a war zone, almost die, arrive in Siem Reap, and visit Angkor Wat because it turns out that temples were his thing. It ends with Tony having dinner in Grand Hotel d’Angkor complimenting the chef for the Khymer cuisine, presumably because he assumed that he could say what he likes about Cambodian food and everyone would accept it as the truth rather than go for themselves. It’s a bit like when Food Review Club visits a kebab house in Rotherham. Fifteen hundred quid he charges. Fifteen hundred quid.
I asked to be sat in Bourdain’s chair in the 1952 restaurant which they couldn’t accommodate in the restaurant because a refurb means it is now in the bar where we just sat. Instead they sit us right by the wine room, under the shadow of the twenty grand Romanee Conti and the thirty grand Latiffe. We are shown four menus, each representing an age from the hotel and priced between $60 and $90. We ask if we can skip between the eras like a Taylor Swift concert and they oblige on the condition we stop slagging Matty Healy off. It starts with a skewer of lobster for us both in a yellow curry sauce. The lobster is a little overcooked to our liking, the sauce is beautiful and silky, leaning heavily on the coconut milk.
And for the rest of this, I am going to be extremely conscious of criticism of textures and, to some extent, the flavours. The world is a big place, and travel has taught me that what’s good for European palates is rarely ever the case elsewhere. So poultry tends to be a little older and a little firmer, red meats are hung for less time. I am a visitor in their country, their kitchen. I am not going to set the rules. That said, the roasted aubergine and minced pork salad with crispy vermicelli noodles was superb, mostly down to a bold use of lime juice. Sophie’s pounded chicken salad with green mango would have been bolder in chilli and acidity in neighbouring countries. Here it was just pleasant. There is a soup course; Sophie likes her fish green soup, which is rife with galangal, garlic, and kaffir, whilst my tropical vegetable soup is the only major misstep of the meal. It is murky and watery and tastes only of stock.
There is a kind of stir fry of prawns, scallops, and squid in a bright dressing of oyster sauce, green Kampot pepper, and palm sugar, whilst Sophie has lobster thermidor with a little of that Khymer yellow curry in the gratinated mix. How authentic this is, I have no idea, but she lapped it up in full. There is another stir fry of lamb that is slightly warming with spice, and a main of roasted chicken leg that has a rather glorious sour glaze of green tamarind, and a deeply unpleasant banana flower puree. Desserts need refining; a pumpkin tart has thick pastry but excellent vanilla ice cream, whilst a porridge of coconut and palm with a cinnamon heavy sorbet just feels disjointed. The bill, with two bottles of good wine and plenty of cocktails, comes in at just under £360. We really enjoyed the night.
The team at Raffles gave us a recommendation in The Sugar Palm. It was here on another night we saw real Cambodia. Not the watery, generic yellow amok that sits on every menu alongside bad pizza, but an amok that needs to be given 40 minutes cooking time from order; steamed in leaf until the sauce becomes a set custard that sings gently with makrut lime zest, lemongrass, and red chilli. It is one of the best things I have ever eaten, yours for £5. It has taken me eight years and two visits to realise two things about Cambodia. Firstly, the Cambodian people are the best in the world. To go through everything they have and to still be the most polite, courteous, and generous of folk says more about them than any western nation. Secondly, their food might not have the aggression of Thai cooking, or the herbal qualities of Vietnam, but it does share a lot of similarities with Cambodian people. It is delicate and nuanced, you might have to dig a little deeper to see the beauty in it, but it is there and it is as beautiful as any temple you are likely to see. I don’t think that life will need to take me back to Cambodia again and that makes me a little bit sad to think about.
Raffles 8/10
Amok at the The Sugar Palm 10/10
Cambodian people 200/10
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