Vietnam and Cambodia
Siem Reap Food Tour
One of the fun things about traveling with Sail with Seth is that Seth occasionally arranges unexpected Sail with Seth-only adventures. It was our last night in Siem Reap—our base of operations in Angkor—and we were finished visiting centuries-old archaeological sites. Seth suggested we go on a Cambodian food tour. You betcha! Let’s go!
So the Sail with Seth group piled into a train of tuk-tuks and off we went!
Here are some photos:
This is the first of what would be 5 stops on this food tour. Our guides were 2 expats now living in Siem Reap, one an Australian (standing at the head of the table flashing the peace sign) and the other an American (in light brown standing at the other side of the head of the table). I don’t remember their names—I knew I should have written them down!—but if you do, please put them in the comments. And, of course, the other standing gentleman, in blue, is our own Seth.
The food soon arrived and it was time to dig in. I don’t know what it was called or what was in it (except for a fried egg—not usually my favorite thing to eat), but it was excellent, very tasty!
Here’s our chef for the first restaurant. She’s preparing our whatever-they-weres. If you know what they were called, please put that in a comment!
Here we’re seated at the second restaurant we visited. Unlike the first restaurant, they seated us right at the front of the restaurant, next to the road, and brought us platter after platter after platter of food.
Those of you who know me may recall that I spent my first couple of years out of college as a health inspector. Yep, one of those guys who went into a restaurant with a clipboard, a checklist, and a thermometer and looked for violations of sanitary standards. Too many of these little guys is a violation of those standards. There were lots of these flying health hazards in the second restaurant and they were landing on more than my chopsticks. Let’s just say I passed on eating at the second restaurant.
The third restaurant seated the Sail with Seth group in the back, in a room to ourselves. It was going to be a few minutes before the food arrived, and that gave me a chance to check the place out.
This restaurant made all their noodles on site, and they used an apparently homemade contraption to do that. The noodle-maker would fill up a cylinder with a runny dough and then place what was effectively a piston into the top of the cylinder. Next, she would put what appeared be an automotive bottle jack on top of the piston. This all fit inside an A-frame that was sitting on top of a large vat of boiling water. She would then pump the jack, which would press down the piston and squeeze the dough through a screen at the bottom of the cylinder, extruding long, thin strands of batter into the boiling water. Clever!
And here are the finished noodles in a basket of various veggies and a roasted snake (no, I didn’t try that!). There were other platters that offered various meats. I don’t know what type I had, but it was delicious!
The idea at this restaurant was to put noodles into a bowl and then add various meats and veggies to the bowl. Next, you would spoon one or more of these sauces into the bowls. I tried several combinations and it was all excellent!
There is a street in Siem Reap that turns into a fair every night, with vendors lining each side of the street. Our next stop—number 4—was one of those vendors. I honestly don’t remember the food there, but what was memorable was the knee-high table and tiny kid’s chairs that we were invited to sit on. The food was so-so, but getting up out of those chairs was a real challenge!
Our last stop of the night was at what was essentially a food truck that offered desserts. The treats were sweet and tasty. Soon enough it was time to pile back into our train of tuk-tuks and head back to the hotel. The next day we would leave Siem Reap and the wonders of Angkor. I can’t think of a better way to have topped off our time in Siem Reap than the food tour. It was quite the escapade and gave us a chance to experience a taste of modern Cambodian culture. What great fun!