The weird foods post

Wednesday, August 20, 2008
10:46 PM ICT
Room 228, Salina Hotel
Siem Reap, Siem Reap Province, Cambodia

I suppose we all knew this was coming. At some point, in going to a foreign country, everyone winds up eating some weird ass food, then either telling people about it later, or, for those tech-savvy 21st century travelers, they blog about it.

And generally, my trip’s actually been pretty disappointing on the weird foods front. I had heard such exotic tales, of insect eating, a dish called still-beating cobra heart, and, of course, balut. (PS: best balut reaction video ever here.) Balut is everywhere here (though I have not yet summoned up the particular combination of alcohol and testicular fortitude required to eat such a thing), but other than that, the food seems pretty normal. I mean Asian normal – curries, stir-fries, rice, soy sauce, a very strong Cambodian fish sauce called prahoc, lots of lemongrass, lots of amazing tropical fruit shakes.

Tonight was a bit different. It’s our last night in Siem Reap, so we went out for dinner with Kris, who runs the NGO from the administrative side. Kris is awesome… very quiet, but very funny, very sharp, incredibly organized. If it weren’t for her, the NGO would fall apart in a matter of days. Previous experience looking at what she eats for lunch threw up warning bells about her food choices, but it’s our last night and we wanted Khmer food and she knew where to find it.

Now a quick note: we had a fair bit of experience with Khmer food, but it mostly fell into 2 categories: either tourist-catering restaurant Khmer food (which tones down some dishes and ditches others) and street food (which normally keeps it simple: fried rice or noodles with veg and meat, and maybe a fruit shake). The restaurant we went to was a bit different.

Me and Natalie arrived before Kris and notice that not only is the patronage entirely Khmer, but the menu is too – a good sign. Aside from the names of Western beers, there is not one word of English on the menu. After a slightly tense 45-minute wait, Kris does show, and we let her order for us (we have little other option). She ordered 4 dishes. Dish 1 was French fries – I think partially as a joke, partially because of the other food that was coming. Like many Cambodian French fries (I’ve now had 3 or 4 experiences) they were shoestring fries, fried until crispy throughout, and served with a too-sweet homemade ketchup. Good, tho. Next dish was some kind of stir-fried chicken thing that was pretty good.

Dish 3 was where it got a bit odd. She described it as ‘beef’; a more accurate name would be ‘raw fermented beef salad’. Food is always a bit sketchy in Cambodia, but there’s a couple things you never eat unless you’re absolutely sure: first is uncooked vegetables, because they are likely washed in the disease-ridden Cambodian tap water. Second thing you need to be very very careful with is meat, because meat has diseases, obviously – and you NEVER GODDAMN EAT IT RAW, EVER. And the final thing you never eat without knowing for absolute sure – not just in Cambodia, but this is a good everywhere rule – is fermented stuff. Because you know other process bears a striking resemblance to the fermentation process? The rotting process. So that dish was a bit iffy.

Then there’s Dish 4. Continuing her streak of understatement, Kris referred to this dish as ‘chicken soup’. And it was chicken soup, a bit unfamiliarly flavoured, and the whole, oddly-shaped potato in it was a bit off-putting. But what I’m writing about is the rest of the soup, which would be charitably referred to as ‘chicken meat’, though there seemed to be a deliberate attempt to avoid any part of the chicken that westerners would refer to as ‘meat’. There were chicken feet, liver, some bits filled with shatters of bone like tiny shrapnel (damnit, Landmine Museum on the brain again!). Then there was this… thing, that I ate. It was rubbery and black and really weirdly shaped. Kris, who has ordered this dish before, when I asked her what it was, simply shrugged. We decided, in the end, it was an inside-out lung.

And I hate to say something so stereotypical, but you know what? It tasted kind of like chicken.

Sidenote: yes, I know I previously mentioned struggling with diarrhea and now I’m discussing eating fermented meat, but you know… shut up.

Second sidenote: yes, I did have some of the fermented beef salad. Not bad. It did not taste like chicken.