SPICEGASM.COM My travel tales and food hunting

Pictures on Khmer War

On our second day in Phnom Penh, we woke up early ( surprisingly ) and went for our free buffet breakfast. After breakfast, I went online with my laptop as our hotel room has free wifi with awesome speed. I wanted to get more information about Phnom Penh, especially the food scene.

FCC ( Foreign Correspondent’s Club ) caught my attention while I was surfing the net for information. I read more about FCC and to my understanding, it is a cool place to hang out and serve good food. I saw some nice pictures where people are chilling and the restaurant is facing the Tonle Sap river. So I decided to go check out more about this place later in the evening.

I took a long nap after visiting many sites regarding Phnom Penh. By the time I woke up it was already 5 pm. We missed lunch and decided to get our dinner in FCC around 6pm. We paid USD 3 for the tuk tuk ride and arrived around 6.15pm.

Going up the stair case will lead us to the famous bar and resto of FCC. The wall is full of old pictures on Khmer war. I have to admit my knowledge on this matter is very limited and most likely my information is based highly on the movie “The Killing Fields”. FCC seems to look like an old building that has a lot of history to it.

The setting of the restaurant and bar of FCC really gave me the feel that this is the place where journalist used to wine down after a hectic day working in the battle field.

The settings of FCC made me felt like a journalist. I justified the rights to feel like a journalist after convincing myself that I have a food blog. ( I am aware my blog is not really good but is still a blog! ).

We decided to sit in this nice little quiet corner. My instinct told me that I should order western cuisine instead of Cambodian food. From my previous experiences, places like FCC tend to modify local cuisine to the taste buds of majority of their patrons, which in this case are mostly foreigners.

I was satisfied with my choice of order which was a specialty of FCC. It was a big juicy steak with it’s special sauce. The almost half mash potatoes tasted really good.

Zach opted for a thin slice fire oven baked pizza. The toppings were just fresh cherry tomatoes and mozzarella cheese. He did mention that his pizza was uberly delicious. ( Farang are easy to please, Domino’s would have made him happy. Sorry Zach, I gotta take a jab at you )

This is the fire oven in FCC where they bake pizza. It taste really different if wood is being used compared to the normal electric oven.

After our meal, we hung out at the bar to get some Angkor Beer draft. I took some pictures of patrons of FCC getting the best seat. Seats that are facing the Tonle Sap river and it is breezy and nice. Wellll….obviously, we wanted to have our meal on those seat but as you can see it is always full.

So this is our second day in Phnom Penh and we have yet to get any local Cambodian cuisine. We are determine to make that happen on our third day.

After resting a bit and showered, I did a bit of research on the Internet looking for authentic Cambodian food. Most of the sites recommends restaurants that are located by the Mekong Riverfront area. Most of the sites are owned by Westerners and I’ve always skeptical about their Asian food recommendation. So I decided to just walked around a bit and try to see if there’s any stalls or restaurant that will catch my attention.

Zach and I walked towards the direction of the famous Riverfront area. We have no clue how far it is from our hotel but we just walked for a bit to get the sense of what is around our hotel area. After 15 minutes walk, we stumbled upon a Vietnamese restaurant. Since we were hungry and more familiar with Vietnamese food, I decided to just settle for Vietnamese food instead of Cambodian food. I always make it a point to eat local food whenever I’m in that particular country. I made a mental note to myself that by tomorrow I will have to taste some local cuisine.

The Vietnamese restaurant by the name of Saigon City looks pretty classy. I have no idea how much our dinner would cost us but we will just give it a try since we are hungry. We wanted to sit outside but there seems to have some small bugs on the table. It looked like dry tiny leaves but upon checking it properly, it is some sort of small bugs that I’ve never seen before. We decided to just sit in the air condition are of the restaurant.

For starter, we ordered 2 kinds of Vietnamese springroll. One is stuffed with minced pork and the other with shrimp. I’m quite familiar with this dish as it is quite mainstream.

For my main course, I ordered a chicken BBQ rice set. It comes with soup and some cucumber. The dip for the chicken is sweet chili sauce. I enjoyed the food very much but some what I’m disappointed with myself for not being a little bit more adventurous. I played safe and ordered food that I’m familiar with. I should be eating authentic Cambodian food instead of Vietnamese food. At least I’m not eating KFC or Mcdo. Oh well, is only my first night in Cambodia and I vowed to find some good Cambodian food for my next meal. So for 2 Vietnamese Chicken BBQ set meal, minced pork spring roll, prawn spring roll and 2 bottles of mineral water, the meal cost us USD12.

After dinner we decided to go to the Riverfront area where there are a lot of pubs and bars to check out the night life scene. We asked the waiter in the Vietnamese restaurant whether it is walking distance. He said is better for us to take the tuk-tuk. It will cost us around USD2 for the both of us. The ride along the Sisowath Road was pretty cool and we saw a lot of hotels, bars and restaurant along the way. All the hip establishment is facing the Mekong River and it looked like a beach from far. This is the biggest river I’ve seen all my life. We asked the tuk-tuk driver to stop when I saw a lot of people in Mekong River Restaurant. Most of the customers are tourists and I’ve always enjoyed chilling in places like these. You get to mingle with other tourists and share tales. I also always make it as a practice to drink local beers whenever I’m visiting a country. Angkor beer is the beer of choice for many and we decided to give it a try. We were so happy when the waiter told us the price for a mug is at USD0.60. I do not consider myself an alcoholic as there are times where I do not drink for a month. But on occasions like these, I can sometimes drink up to 20 mugs.

Everybody is so relax here as they are tourist on holidays. There’s the normal big screen tv showing football matches.

The Star of Cambodia – not Zach but Angkor Beer

After many years of drinking beer, I still can’t really tell the difference between a good or a bad beer. There’s a trick to make all beer turn good. Just drink 5 mugs or glasses really fast and most of the time, the beer will taste really good and everyone suddenly is your brother or sister. In fairness, Angkor Beer does taste really good. So with USD0.60 for a good beer, I bet you can imagine how many beers that we gulped that night as part time alcoholics.