Roger’s Cambodia posts from late September 2013 have a clear theme, and he stated it himself more than once: the best meals came from asking the people who lived there. Eight photos from Phnom Penh and Siem Reap are now in the archive, and together they read like a short lesson in how to eat on the road.
It starts on the street in Phnom Penh. A roadside bowl of beef and wide rice noodles, with a steel caddy of condiments and the cook working in a tiny, crowded stall, gets a two-word review: damn tasty. The same day, lunch at Khmer Surin came recommended by their driver.
In Siem Reap the pattern holds. Dinner at Viroth’s came with a thank-you to Da, the local who took them there — a polished spread of herb salad, stir-fried shrimp and minced pork with eggplant. Khmer Kitchen was another pick from their driver, and the caption says another, which tells you the first recommendation had earned their trust: yellow curries with long beans and pumpkin, fresh rolls with crushed peanuts and a fried egg over rice.
The Soup Dragon earned some of the strongest praise of the trip. Roger’s caption calls its hủ tiếu, bánh cuốn and iced coffee the closest to authentic Vietnamese food he had found in nearly three months. For a sugar fix, The Blue Pumpkin supplied an oversized pistachio macaron and coffee sorbet.
The best story is the smallest meal. Roger saw a man cycling around with a sandwich cart and flagged him down for a Khmer-style bánh mì — a crusty baguette stuffed with shredded papaya and carrot. It is street food in its purest form: not found, just encountered.
And then there is the taco test. Coming from a city with the best Mexican food on the planet, the caption says, seriously not being biased, they tried a burrito, tacos and a frozen margarita in Siem Reap. Roger did not record a verdict, which may be the most diplomatic review in the entire archive.
Like everything in Travel Eats, these are dated records from 2013, not a current guide. But the method still works anywhere: ask your driver where they would eat.
The frames in this story
