3 Recommended Restaurants for Families in Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Part 1

LOT369

Lot369 is a little pricey compared to other restaurants in Phnom Penh, but by looking at their menu, you can see why. Some of that money goes into paying a fair wage, plus they offer foods that are hard-to-find in other restaurants. When compared to restaurants in the U.S., it is still extremely affordable. Here are some of the options:

Here is a coconut milk, turmeric latte from Lot369, as they were out of cashew milk. It's great to see non-caffeinated warm drinks available.
 
We saw the lemongrass and ginger kombucha; but there were several other flavors.

Lot369 has vegan, vegetarian, and gluten free options. They have an environmentally-sustainable mindset. They had re-usable coffee cups for sale if you wanted a drink to go, bamboo straws and recycled plates and cups. The furniture was made from pallets. We chose to eat in the upstairs room, because it was connected to......


The all-too-rare-in-Cambodia kid's playroom! It was amazing to sit and talk with Benjamin while the kids were enthralled with new-to-them toys for a good while. Going on dates in an international setting with kids can be tricky, so this was a great find! They have kids-eat-free day on Thursday, so we’ll have to try it again.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 KILIK



At Kilik bakery and cafe, you can buy the drink of your choice, averaging at $2 and receive two pastries free. In addition, they bring a free cup of iced/hot Jasmin tea. This means we can order two drinks for adults and one or two (they are BIG) for the kids to share, and get enough pastries for everyone! With the tea thrown in, it's a great deal. Our favorite pastries include chocolate croissants, apple bread, banana bread, berry filled pastries and cupcakes. They have recently started offering sandwiches as well, so we can get out of there with lunch for under $10. (That's insane with a family of 6). Plus, the staff is friendly and competent, and there is comfortable seating. Kilik also has an air-conditioned meeting room closed off  from the main seating area if you need that kind of space.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 CYCLO CAFE

 
The Cyclo cafe was an interesting place. They have several seating options, including an outside area up stairs.

It was almost part museum, part cafe. The boys enjoyed modeling the rickshaw. This is a really fancy rickshaw compared to the ones we see near the riverside that are often a beaten up red or green color, or like this one.

Cyclo cafe has many drinks around $2, and they are a good size, too. This was a framed Cambodian stringed instrument. it is similar to the one played here. In the bathroom, there were these sprouting seeds. They are similar to these avocado seed sprouts, but I couldn't tell if they were for sure. What's your best guess?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, if you are looking for a sustainable variety of food, great value, or a cultural experience, these places are a great place to take a break and recharge with family. We hope you try them and enjoy them as much as we have!

(This is not a sponsored post. We only share it because our first month in Cambodia, we pretty much lived off of peanut butter because we couldn't 1)find food, and 2)find our way back home from said food, and 3) it was frustrating to find affordable options that were good for a family of our size, hygienic and tasty.)

Rain, Guests, and Interviews

When it rains, every once in a while, it comes in under the roof with strong wind and seeps down the walls, pooling in the boy’s room.

Since he reads himself to sleep and then kicks books off his bed, this book got really soggy. I tried to help it dry in the toaster oven. Rainy season is supposed to be finished, but it still rains fairly regularly.

Some friends from New York came through and we made them Khmer curry.

The kids loved playing, reading books and then watching a video about the cargo ships prompted by the book.

The next morning we got them breakfast from our favorite (fresh) street vendor. I noticed they used a type of rocket stove to cook the rice and boil water for tea.

The kids (and I) were excited that our guests brought chocolate! Thanks!

In other news, we are interviewing for several places and some of the feeling of being in limbo may be lifted or prolonged depending on the results. Until then, we’ll appreciate the time we have in Cambodia.

“Fall” Baking

I suppose it’s kind of fall. It was only 86 degrees Fahrenheit today with a nice breeze, so that counts for something. Talia and I have taken advantage of the cooler temperatures to bake; (though the heat didn’t really stop us before, as there’s no central AC so it’s always hot in there.)

When we got a pumpkin at the market we made it into a pie (for once, instead of portioning it out for soups.) Here, what is called a pumpkin is a bumpy, green acorn squash at home. It tastes the same as pumpkin, though.

Our friend said Khmer people do something that tastes similar to pumpkin pie: hollow the seeds out of a pumpkin, fill it with a mixture of eggs, coconut milk and sugar and bake it letting the pumpkin be the crust. It sounds like it makes a custard-like filling. I'm up for trying it!

We also made black bean and potato empanadas. The electricity went out around 5:30 that night, so we enjoyed them by candlelight as that’s when it’s been getting dark lately. I suppose it’s a good thing that it gets dark so early so we don’t miss good places for the kids to play so much. It’s dark not long after the boys get home from school.

Talia enjoyed incorporating learning how to flood cookies with icing for a homeschool lesson.

Here’s our new-to-us fruit for this time: rose apple.

Have you ever tried one?

The Moon Festival, or, Mid-Autumn Festival

Wednesday, October 4 2017 was the Moon Festival. Although this is typically a Chinese/Vietnamese celebration called Mid-Autumn Festival, many people in Cambodia have adopted it and I've only heard it called Moon Festival. "Who doesn't want another holiday to eat cake?" was the reason my neighbor gave me.

I noticed something new hanging over their door, but didn't know what it was until a few days later when the neighbor's daughter came out with something white in her hands. The neighborhood kids have been playing with pieces of Styrofoam lately, so I thought that's what she had. When she started to eat it, I hurried to ask her mom if it was Styrofoam. It turns out it was Moon Cake.

"Mid-Autumn was first celebrated as a festival during the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127). Like the emperors, ancient people believed worshipping the moon and eating together round a table would bring them good luck and happiness."

Suddenly, little things I had been seeing around town began to make more sense. In the little market near our house, there was a giant, circle cake with Chinese characters on top in front of a shrine in the back. (Compared to the entire giant pig at New Year, I thought that was quite tame.) My neighbor said the Moon Festival is a time when the family will get together and eat and then they wake up at midnight and say a prayer to the moon for health and wealth.

Another friend said that while there are many Chinese people in Cambodia who celebrate Chinese holidays, typically Vietnamese and Chinese celebrate the same holidays, while Thailand and Cambodia celebrate the same Buddhist holidays.

The Moon Festival was something I had never heard of before, so I thought I'd share it with you.

Morning Glory/Water Spinach, Vietnamese Persimmons/Golden Apple and Guava: New-to-us Khmer Food

I've learned several new fruits and vegetables lately. I thought I'd share them with you.

Below you see the water lily stems that take special talent to harvest. When you pinch off the stem, if you are not careful, mud will be drawn up the stalk. The Khmer lady who sells these has four children depending on her at home and something happened to her husband. She walks around town with a big basket of these carried on her head calling out the name of them in Khmer. Our neighbor said she uses these to make a salad with thin strips of the water lily stem, chicken, lime juice and herbs.

Water spinach, or morning glory, are the stems of the sweet potato plant. They are used in soup the same way you would use spinach and with a similar taste. Many times it is used in a soup with rice noodles.

I had no clue what these were when my friend gave them to us. My Vietnamese friend helped me out with the Latin name: Diospyros decandra, or a type of persimmon. One way the Khmer eat these is with the flesh mashed in a mixture of milk, sugar, and chia or basil seeds. The pulp is pretty astringent in the mouth, so all of that can be pretty necessary!

Here you see a guava. These were really popular in Mexico, but the ones I saw were smaller, many times made into preserves. Here guava is enjoyed dipped in salt, sometimes with garlic powder, chili or sugar.

The kids all tried a bite and thought it was good, but even better, the pasabulong from our Filipina friends who came home from holiday and were so kind to think of us:

The biscocho is from Iloilo and the piaya is from Negros Occidental.

Yep, it was yummy!

Elias had fun trying on his father's shirt... it'll be a few years before it fits.

 

The boys love to help cook! Here they were making cinnamon rolls:

 

One of them wants to be a fireman who owns a restaurant on the side when he grows up. The other one wants to build "helico'ters." I can't wait to see what they become!

Tom Yum Soup: Cambodian Recipe

When my friend told me she would teach me to make Tom Yum soup, I had this mental image of making a fabulous from-scratch dish... It started out OK: We chopped onions, tomatoes and got some of these small, white mushrooms.

Then came the disappointing part, ANYTHING CAN BE TOM YUM IF YOU ADD THE MAGIC CUBE!!!

...also known as an MSG-laden bouillon cube conveniently containing the flavors that I can't read in Khmer.

As I'm accustomed to making stock from vegetables or bone broth as the base of a soup, this was different. Still, I'm thankful she showed me how it's done. This part is easy enough to modify.

We added some bok choy and the coconut milk made a delicious broth. Next, I would love to learn the delicious noodle soup they served at Nature Lodge in Modulkiri and around the country, or at least I think I would...

Khmer Curry

There is an argument over who curry really belongs to, the English or the Indian, but today I'm going to show you a completely different version of curry; Khmer.

We started out chopping up lemon grass, turmeric, garlic, and some kind of fragrant leaf that I didn't know the name of, and the person teaching me only knew in Khmer. My friends told me it was Kaffir lime leaf.

 

We had some dried red peppers soaking while we did this. 

Next we blended up the lemon grass, turmeric, Kafir lime leaf, and garlic with..... roasted peanuts! Then, we blended up the red peppers. These two were kept in separate bowls.

 

Of course, anything Khmer style has all of the bones. They just chop it up, bone and all. We chose to do a chicken version.

 

One of the coconut vendors nearby had a machine to extract the juice and oil of  the coconut. We started by boiling a small bag of coconut oil/juice to evaporate the water and leave the coconut oil.

 

When it had evaporated, she added the blended up mixtures and some curry powder.

 

When the spices were cooked and fragrant, we added the chicken.

 

After the chicken was well on its way, we added a big bag of coconut milk, (being sure to discard the brown pulpy part in the bottom of the bag from the husk of the coconut) and let it boil a while.

 

Last, we added salt, a little teaspoon of sugar and vegetables. It is usually cooked with green beans, sweet potato or pumpkin, and onions. I made it with what we had, so regular potatoes, carrot, onion and green beans.

It is usually eaten over rice or with fresh baguettes from the local bakery. Everybody really liked it and asked if we can make it once a week!

December Happenings: Wrapping up 2016

2016 is drawing to a close and, though we are on "winter" break, it doesn't really feel like winter here, though it is cooler. The rainy season is mostly over, with only an occasional outburst and the weather is low 80s and high 90s each day.

We tried a traditional Khmer restaurant because of their excellent prices the other day. It reminded us a lot of Abu Dhabi's traditional way of eating: dense cushions on the floor with really low tables. Of course, I doubt these cushions were filled with camel hair, like in the Middle East. (I'm not sure how Cambodians in their third trimester comfortably sit that low!) The drink was jasmine flower tea and we had a chicken curry with rice and a beef soup with a dominant kafir lime flavor in the broth. The menu included things like frog, snake head fish and other things.

The kids have been playing with a neighborhood cat since it was a tiny kitten. I think Talia especially has it almost tamed. It belongs to a neighborhood store, so we don't care for it, but it's the perfect pet for expat children: you get to love it but not worry about it if you have to leave or pay for the medical/food and other expenses.

The kids were really excited to open presents from their teachers at school. We hardly ever buy candy, so finding chocolate was very exciting.

We've been chopping it up a little at a time and using it in recipes to make it last longer. Talia made chocolate chunk, oatmeal cookies with part of it.

I'm at almost 35 weeks with our little girl on the way. We are all getting really excited to meet her next month. Looking back at all of the changes that have come from moving from Mexico to Cambodia and the new cultures and challenges associated with that, we are content to close this year feeling it is stuffed as full as it could be. And, as 2016 comes to a close, we already have a lot to look forward to in the New Year!