Meet the London Chef Serving Cambodian Dishes That Escaped a Genocide

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Meet the London Chef Serving Cambodian Dishes That Escaped a Genocide

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Meet the London Chef Serving Cambodian Dishes That Escaped a Genocide


By Charles Parkinson

For many in Europe and North America, April 1 is a day for getting away with cellophaning toilet bowls and greasing doorknobs. But in Cambodia, the date marks something much more sombre.

On that day in 1975, the country’s then-President Lon Nol was forced to flee the country, as an eight-year civil war against the Khmer Rouge entered its final phase. Little more than a fortnight later, the communist guerrillas marched into the capital Phnom Penh and one of history’s most infamous genocides began.

Around a quarter of Cambodia’s 8 million inhabitants died over the following four years, the vast majority executed as part of the Khmer Rouge’s radical attempt to impose an agrarian socialist society. A generation of artists and intellectuals was butchered, and cultural traditions were wiped out.

But in a tranquil corner of North London, just a few hundred meters from the bustle of Camden Town, one Cambodian man has preserved some pieces of culinary heritage largely lost to his homeland more than 40 years ago.

Image
Lemongrass Restaurant in North London. All photos by the author.

Thomas Tan left Cambodia as a teenager in 1969, heading to London to study English. As the son of a wealthy family, Tan was destined to return home and rub shoulders with the elite, just as he had grown up watching his father do. But history conspired against him, and his trip to the UK turned into permanent residency. Twenty years after arriving in London, he opened Lemongrass Restaurant, which today remains London’s only dedicated Cambodian restaurant, and one of only three in the UK.

Continue reading: https://munchies.vice.com/en/articles/m ... a-genocide
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