Cambodian cuisine

One question people from home ask me is what do I do for food. Do I cook? Do I eat local food or western food? And so on. I have a small kitchen in my apartment with a single gas burner, but I only use it to heat water for noodles or coffee. Food here is so cheap and so good that it doesn't make sense for me to cook. Back home it's far cheaper to eat at home than go out. Here it's the opposite!

Even at the tourist restaurants on the riverfront it's possible to have a meal and a cocktail for $5 or so. Get away from the tourist areas and go to one of the little sidewalk restaurants and you can eat well for less than a dollar.

People think I'm exaggerating to make a point but I can get an honest-to-goodness meal for less than a dollar here. There's a sidewalk cafe around the corner from my school that I frequent. The owner cooks up a few big pots of soup. You lift the lids, look at what's inside and (if you don't speak Khmer) point at what you want.

This is my favorite soup there. It's a sweet-and-sour sort of affair, with pineapple, tomato, melon, fish and an okra-like vegetable. I get it often but because I use the point-and-smile method of ordering I have no idea what it's called! (Hopefully this will change soon. I start taking Khmer language lessons this week.)


As you can see I get a bowl of soup, rice, a little bag of chili sauce, a cup of jasmine tea and even a plastic spoon for 4,000 riel. That's about 95 cents at the usual conversion rate. It's possible to eat for half that.