More Khmer Food, but Not Tarantulas

We made it today to Romdeng, the ethical dining restaurant that we were too late for yesterday. The set menu looked interesting (stir fried squid, beef with morning glory soup, rice, and khmer cake), but we were more intrigued by other dishes on the menu, so ordered ala carte and ate family style.

For only $3.50, we could have tried the crispy fried tarantulas with lime dipping sauce, but the family said no. I really wanted to try them, since I figured this was about the safest, cleanest way to do so. But Declan threatened to toss the spiders into the decorative pool in the garden, and Richard threatened to toss his cookies onto the table. So no tarantulas for me. (I must be honest here: if there had been a way to order just one spider, not a plateful, that would have been sufficient. I can’t imagine liking them, but think that it would certainly be a food I’ll never eat at home.)

So instead, we tried Fish Amok in Banana Leaves, Steamed Mekong Fish with Ginger and Basil, Banana Flower Salad with Grilled Cambodian Bacon, and Battenbang Baby Pork Rib Soup with Slack Trung.

The steamed fish was perhaps the best, a very delicate and light fish with a simple sauce made with ginger and a bit of salty stuff (fish sauce, perhaps, though not that strong). The Fish Amok is the national dish, and is a lovely reddish curry flavored with lots of kaffir lime leaves. Unlike many Thai curries which are served pretty wet (lots of sauce relative to the chunky stuff), this was drier, with each small grape-size chunk of fish coated with, but not swimming in, the tasty sauce.

The pork soup was liked by Aidan and I. Richard found it too porky again, and Declan found it too spicy. I still have no idea what Slack Trung is, but the soup was a bright green, thinnish, slightly greasy porky broth, filled with a sour pureed green veg and a hint of chili.

I’d expected the banana flower salad to be the most unusual of the bunch, but the reality is the flowers (which were finely shredded) didn’t have much flavor themselves. Instead, they provided a crunchy base for a dressing with peanuts, lime and sweet chili sauce. The Cambodian bacon lent a base note to the flavor, but if it hadn’t been there, the whole thing would have been pretty reminiscent of an understated Thai green papaya salad.

Having been abstemious with the drinks (water for all), we awarded ourselves dessert. I loved the mangos with sticky rice, but the rest of the family are not huge coconut fans and were put off by the big poof of shredded fresh coconut on the top. The tropical fruit plate (picked by Declan) was a great opportunity to try some of the fruits we’ve been checking out in the market. We were disappointed by most of them.

Dragon fruit, which looks like an undersea creature with its hot pink color and octopus like shape, is reminiscent of kiwi inside. Pale white flesh evenly speckled with little black seeds. But the flavor is kind of washed out and not very tasty.

Mango and papaya were both there, and the mango at least was tasty. Aidan likes papaya generally, but this was a pretty boring tasting one. The rambutan (which we ate in Thailand) was sweet, but the longan had a petrol like flavor that was pretty off putting. Mind you, the two fruits, peeled, look a lot like a Halloween display of fake eyeballs, especially the longan since you can just see the black center seed through its translucent flesh.

There were two kinds of pears, the familiar Asian one we see in Seattle, and another very small one that was kind of mushy and bland. Sprinkled over the top of everything were some extra large pomegranate seeds.

The real winner on the dessert front, though, was the rice flour and turmeric crepes filled with caramelized bananas and topped with coconut gelato. Seriously yum. Even the coconut haters liked the ice cream. I’ll have to remember turmeric and carmelized flavor mix.

I tried to upload the photos of the food into this post, but it's not working for some reason. I'll come back and add them later.