US Cambodia Cuisine is Connecting Khmer-Americans with their Culture

Discussions about restaurants, cafes, coffee shops or bars in Cambodia. Feel free to write any reviews you have, whether its the best burger you've had in Phnom Penh or the worse pizza in Kampot, we want to read it! Discussions about Khmer dishes are also in here, or you can leave your own. If you own a restaurant, feel free to let the expat community know about it here so that we can come check it out. Found a favorite cafe or have a place we should avoid? Tell us about it. Asian recipes & questions are always welcome.
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Re: US Cambodia Cuisine is Connecting Khmer-Americans with their Culture

Post by CEOCambodiaNews »

The trials and tribulations of opening a Tex-Khmer restaurant in Dallas.

After a Stint in Downtown Dallas, Cambodian Restaurant Kamp Fire Is Relocating to Plano
“You asked. We listened.”
by Adele Chapin Jan 24, 2020, 2:55pm CST

Kamp Fire opened up in August 2019 billing itself as the city’s first eatery focused on Cambodian cuisine — but the location downtown ended up to not be the right fit. After quickly closing in October, the owners are trying again with a relaunch.

The restaurant’s Instagram account posted a caption earlier this month teasing a new location, writing: “Downtown we took an L but right now, WE BOUNCE BACK!”

Today, Kamp Fire announced with a video on Instagram that it will reopen in Plano. The caption reads: “You asked. We listened. Safety. Seating. Free parking. BYOB. RELAUNCHING SOON IN PLANO.”

The wait is on for the official opening date. When Kamp Fire was located Downtown, partners Paul Try and Kevin Top served dishes like skewers of American wagyu beef marinated in Cambodian kroeung, a paste of spices and herbs, along with egg rolls, chicken wings, and nom kong, or traditional Cambodian doughnuts.
https://dallas.eater.com/2020/1/24/2108 ... ning-plano
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Re: US Cambodia Cuisine is Connecting Khmer-Americans with their Culture

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Another Khmer restaurant is closing in the US.

One of the Bay Area's only Cambodian restaurants will permanently close after 30 years
Susana Guerrero
Updated: June 9, 2020 3:37 p.m.
For the last 30 years, Angkor Borei has been a fixture of San Francisco's food scene and one of the Bay Area's few Cambodian restaurants around. But after months of financial struggle, the restaurant has announced it will close for good this month.

Owners Tom Prabpan and Chin Han Yat said they will permanently close their restaurant on June 15 without any plans to reopen elsewhere, Hoodline confirmed.

When shelter in place orders hit in March, Angkor Borei shifted to takeout and delivery service amid the ongoing pandemic. But as the business made the shift, it soon became apparent that takeout alone wouldn't be enough to pay for rent and other expenses.

According to Hoodline, Prabpan and Yat had looked for ways to maintain operations that included cutting back on staff and applying for the Paycheck Protection Program. Despite their efforts, Angkor Borei was denied a small business loan.
"Our daughter helped us apply, but we never got anything back," Yat told Hoodline. "We were told there was no money left."
https://www.sfgate.com/food/slideshow/C ... 203493.php
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Re: US Cambodia Cuisine is Connecting Khmer-Americans with their Culture

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And another one bites the dust...

UES Cambodian Gem Angkor Is Permanently Closing Next Month
Angkor Cambodian Bistro is one of the last standing Cambodian restaurants in the city
by Tanay Warerkar Jul 13, 2020, 2:41pm EDT

One of New York City’s only Cambodian restaurants — Angkor Cambodian Bistro at 408 East 64th Street, near First Avenue — will permanently close on August 1, owners Minh and Mandy Truong announced in a Facebook post on Friday.

“This restaurant and our guests have brought us so much joy over the past five years,” part of the post on Facebook reads. “But we must come to terms that the current crisis is not something we can weather.”

A spokesperson for the restaurant tells Eater that revenue was down “tremendously,” since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and that restaurant regulars had largely stopped showing up either because they are out of town or are cooking more at home.

Pre-pandemic, the restaurant’s revenue was also boosted by alcohol sales, international visitors, and staffers from the nearby Weill Cornell hospital on York Avenue. All of those sales had vanished after the start the pandemic, the spokesperson says. The uncertainty surrounding when the pandemic might end and when restaurants will regain any sense of normalcy prompted the owners to pull the plug.

The restaurant had remained open for takeout and delivery orders throughout the pandemic, and had recently opened its backyard where customers could sit at a handful of tables to eat pick up orders. Still, that wasn’t enough to keep the restaurant afloat.

Angkor now joins dozens of restaurants across the city that have been forced to shutter due to the massive financial fallout caused by the coronavirus virus. For chef and owner Minh Truong, the shuttering marks the end of a major chapter in his culinary endeavors in NYC.
https://ny.eater.com/2020/7/13/21322933 ... nt-closure
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Re: US Cambodia Cuisine is Connecting Khmer-Americans with their Culture

Post by CEOCambodiaNews »

Kamp Fire - Part II (Follow up to posting.php?mode=reply&f=5&t=22763#pr393515)

Kamp Fire Heats Up the Food Scene With Cambodian Cuisine
Cambodian food is not easy to find in Dallas, but it just got easier. Enter Kamp Fire’s enticing Cambodian snack kits.
By Eve Hill-Agnus Published in Food & Drink July 20, 2020 3:46 pm
Image
Kevin Top has traced a long and circuitous journey. The U.S. Army veteran whose résumé includes working as a chef at the Fairmount’s Pyramid Room, the Second Floor with J Chastain, and the Cowboys team’s private dining club, among others, became our mainstay and trailblazer of Cambodian food with Kamp Fire last year.

He opened a fleeting brick and mortar downtown last August, in a long, narrow corridor of a counter-order restaurant across from the West End DART station. But it shuttered before the pandemic.

Now, he’s back, with street food–inspired meal kits he’s calling pick-up pops that allow him to push his Cambodian food forward in a model that works in the new coronavirus reality. He’s making and selling them several times a month for outdoor weekend pick-up.

Count Top among other second-generation Asian American chefs who want to promote the food they grew up with—his grandmother was his greatest influence, he says, on his representing himself “as a Cambodian.” Top holds Donny Sirisavath as a source of motivation, too. About the same time that Sirisavath rooted down with his Khao Noodle Shop, Kamp Fire had come blazing onto the scene, with dishes, flavors, and a vision from a sorely underrepresented culinary tradition.
https://www.dmagazine.com/food-drink/20 ... dian-food/
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Re: US Cambodia Cuisine is Connecting Khmer-Americans with their Culture

Post by Wilhelm »

Good stuff. Quick shout-out to Phnom Penh Noodle Shack in Long Beach, California, and the awesome local Khmer language teachers at the Neighborhood Services Bureau
https://la.eater.com/2017/5/17/15645728 ... es-feature
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A Cambodian deli features in the LA Times food picks for this week.
- 19 August 2020
Gamboge
Gamboge, a Cambodian-inspired deli and market from chef-owner Hak Lonh, is open for takeout in Lincoln Heights. The casual restaurant offers marinated grilled pork sandwiches with pickled veggies, Khmer-style shredded chicken salad, and grilled corn brushed with a creamy coconut glaze.

1822 N. Broadway, Los Angeles, (323) 576-2073, gambogela.com
https://www.latimes.com/food/story/2020 ... d-08232020
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Re: US Cambodia Cuisine is Connecting Khmer-Americans with their Culture

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Ethan Lim's seven-course Cambodian ode to mom and dad is live
Family Meal @hermosachicago is the chef's next step toward a culinary Khmerica.
By Mike Sula
It hasn’t even been a year since I first wrote about Ethan Lim and Hermosa, his extraordinary sandwich shop in the Hermosa neighborhood, but it feels like a consarn lifetime, doesn’t it? Back then, encouraged by the popularity of his Cambodian-inspired fried chicken sandwich and the pork belly prahok ktiss, Lim dangled the possibility of mounting a Khmer-food pop-up in his snug spot.

Well, I told you what happened to that in May (which also feels like a damn lifetime ago). That’s when Lim—like so many food professionals I’ve written about in the months after the president of the United States lied and let 196,277 people die—was forced to pivot to a delivery-only "Cambodian to Go" menu. The good news is that interest in nom bachok and Cambodian steak frites was so encouraging he decided to launch Family Meal @hermosachicago, a seven-course, socially distanced tasting inside the sandwich shop, Thursdays through Saturdays.

The menu is a combination of family style and coursed-out dishes: tek kroeung (a whitefish and smoked oyster dip), prawn and pomelo salad, coconut creamed corn, grilled kroeung (a play on a vegetable stir-fry with the foundational Khmer herbal spice paste), steak frites, the rice noodle dish mee kula, and fried bananas for dessert.

Guests will get individual tongs to serve themselves, while, you and your pod will keep your masks on when you’re not putting anything in your mouths, right?

That’s not a rule. I’m asking you do it for Ethan. He’ll be wearing his.

Lim’s daytime carryout/delivery sandwich menu abides, as does "Cambodian to Go," with expanded offerings such as his mom’s kaw dan, the peppery soy-braised pork belly and egg dish that he contributed to Reader Recipes: Chicago Cooks and Drinks at Home.

Lim will be offering each night’s table on Tock eventually, but for now you can book it by texting or calling 312-588-6283. The Family Meal seats up to four and costs $275, though his first guests at the soft opening two weeks ago—his parents—were comped. “This is truly an ode to them,” he told me, recalling a dinner at a fancy restaurant in Portland last year where his folks felt out of place.
It hasn’t even been a year since I first wrote about Ethan Lim and Hermosa, his extraordinary sandwich shop in the Hermosa neighborhood, but it feels like a consarn lifetime, doesn’t it? Back then, encouraged by the popularity of his Cambodian-inspired fried chicken sandwich and the pork belly prahok ktiss, Lim dangled the possibility of mounting a Khmer-food pop-up in his snug spot.

Well, I told you what happened to that in May (which also feels like a damn lifetime ago). That’s when Lim—like so many food professionals I’ve written about in the months after the president of the United States lied and let 196,277 people die—was forced to pivot to a delivery-only "Cambodian to Go" menu. The good news is that interest in nom bachok and Cambodian steak frites was so encouraging he decided to launch Family Meal @hermosachicago, a seven-course, socially distanced tasting inside the sandwich shop, Thursdays through Saturdays.

The menu is a combination of family style and coursed-out dishes: tek kroeung (a whitefish and smoked oyster dip), prawn and pomelo salad, coconut creamed corn, grilled kroeung (a play on a vegetable stir-fry with the foundational Khmer herbal spice paste), steak frites, the rice noodle dish mee kula, and fried bananas for dessert.

Guests will get individual tongs to serve themselves, while, you and your pod will keep your masks on when you’re not putting anything in your mouths, right?

That’s not a rule. I’m asking you do it for Ethan. He’ll be wearing his.

Lim’s daytime carryout/delivery sandwich menu abides, as does "Cambodian to Go," with expanded offerings such as his mom’s kaw dan, the peppery soy-braised pork belly and egg dish that he contributed to Reader Recipes: Chicago Cooks and Drinks at Home. Still on sale!

Lim will be offering each night’s table on Tock eventually, but for now you can book it by texting or calling 312-588-6283. The Family Meal seats up to four and costs $275, though his first guests at the soft opening two weeks ago—his parents—were comped. “This is truly an ode to them,” he told me, recalling a dinner at a fancy restaurant in Portland last year where his folks felt out of place.
https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/e ... d=82875038
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Re: US Cambodia Cuisine is Connecting Khmer-Americans with their Culture

Post by Cambo Dear »

None of the food looks fully authentic. I don't believe that sourcing ingredients would be a challenge in the US - my local grocer stocks or can procure any exotic fruit or vegetable required.
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Re: US Cambodia Cuisine is Connecting Khmer-Americans with their Culture

Post by newkidontheblock »

Cambo Dear wrote:None of the food looks fully authentic. I don't believe that sourcing ingredients would be a challenge in the US - my local grocer stocks or can procure any exotic fruit or vegetable required.
Cambodia tends to lack the advanced fruit and vegetable processing plants that Thailand (or Vietnam) has. Even at the local markets spoiled food and mystery chemicals injected into the food is an issue.

Where do you live where your local grocer stocks any exotic fruit or vegetable from Cambodia? Even where I live, the majority of exotic Asian products can be found in only Asian grocery stores, about 1 hr away in Chinatown. I have not found any fruits or vegetables that are from Cambodia where I live. Fish sauce, maybe. And none of the orange and white condiment sauces that are found in most restaurants in the Kingdom of Wonder. Granted, I have not inspected every can on the shelf.

Locally sourced fresh ingredients and western interpretation of Khmer food is the current restaurant trend. I doubt Phnom Penh style of gelatin style Prahok would be popular.

Otherwise, it’s whatever ingredients and prepackaged starters that can be supplied by SYSCO.

This is my opinion of what I have seen where I live. If others have access to ingredients direct from the Kingdom of Wonder, then they are far luckier than me.
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Re: US Cambodia Cuisine is Connecting Khmer-Americans with their Culture

Post by Cambo Dear »

Our local Asian grocer 2 minutes away stocks the vast majority of ingredients found in Cambodia and can procure anything requested within a couple of days as he is the one who buys from the suppliers in London. Of course, as in Cambodia, the vast majority of ingredients are not grown on Cambodian soil. I think that there has to be an element of authenticity in the ingredients if you are billing your food as your Grandma's family recipes, otherwise it's a fusion cuisine.
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