SPICEGASM.COM My travel tales and food hunting

There are many Chinese restaurants in Phnom Penh and my friend Eddie always frequent this Chinese restaurant call Yee Boo. It is just a walking distance away from our hotel ( Hotel Cara ). Eddie can’t stop promoting to us how good the Claypot Mutton dish to us. So Chinese cuisine it is for dinner.

The spacious and luxurious balcony

The Chinese Restaurant named Yee Bo is operating in a very big old colonial bungalow. When I set foot into the restaurant, I had this imagination that this mansion used to belong to the French who used to occupy Cambodia for quite sometime. After the French left, probably one of the Khmer Rouge biggies lived in this mansion. After changing ownerships several decades, it is now finally occupy by the boss of this Chinese restaurant name Yee Bo. All these of course are just my imaginations which by the way I tend to do always.

The boss of Yee Bo seems to recognize Eddie and they exchanged pleasantries. The boss also said said hello to Zach and asked where he is from. Asian restaurant owners tend to get excited when they see Westerners patronizing their restaurants. I wonder if the Western restaurant owners will react the same when they see Asian folks dining in their joint.

Eddie told the waitress that he wanted to sit upstairs in a huge balcony. I loved the idea instantly as I loved eating outdoors or semi outdoors. I don’t really fancy eating in air condition places. Outdoor dining also allows me to smoke while having my food and normally a few glasses of beer.

Chicken feet with peanuts soup

The supervisor of  Yee Bo is a lady who speaks fluent Cantonese, which is a Chinese dialect Eddie and I are accustom with. So ordering our food was easy. We ordered the Claypot Mutton, mixed platter of Pork Ribs ( Siew Yoke ) with Chinese BBQ POrk ( Char Siew ) and Kangkung Belacan.

Most Chinese restaurant offers soup of the day for free. The cost to make the soups are normally pretty low. This doesn’t mean the soups will be inferior in taste. A good Chinese soup normally uses pig bones and chicken bones and boil with some other herbs.

We were given the free soup of the day which is the Chicken Feet with Peanut. When the soup arrived on our table, I scooped the soup to see what’s beneath it. Zach saw what I was doing and he suddenly said “Whaohh….is that a baby hand in there?”. Eddie started laughing hysterically looking at Zach’s reaction.

Roast Pork Platter

The roasted pork platter was just all right for me. Nothing really spectacular like those that I’ve eaten in Hong Kong. I ordered it specially for our Western friend as he prefers to eat meat without any bones attached to the meat. The skin area I normally prefers it to be thicker and crunchy.

Claypot Mutton Ribs

Eddie was spot on with his recommendation. I really loved this mutton dish. It is stew slowly in a claypot with shitake mushrooms, radish and Chinese beancurd. Star anise is being used to give this dish a nice taste and fragrant. The meat is so soft and tender and as you bite the meat, it just fall off from the bones easily. I dipped it in my soya sauce mixed with chopped garlic and chili and the taste is simply heavenly. Absolutely divine!

The kangkung belacan dish ( stir fry morning glory in shrimp paste ) was good too. Upon tasting it I can tell the chef is from Malaysia. I further confirmed it by asking the supervisor and I was proven right. We were given some watermelon for dessert after our meal. Total price for our dinner was USD21. I think is really cheap considering the service was excellence. There’s a waitress filling up our tea whenever our cups are empty. She was there the whole time!!!! If any of you happen to be in Phnom Penh and would like to try out the Claypot Mutton Ribs dish, here is the phone number of Yee Bo Restaurant – Tel : 023-430 598 / 015 – 231 888. I can’t provide the address of the restaurant as it is in Chinese and I don’t read Chinese.