Mod-Cambod

My Khmer eating experiences in Phnom Penh have been more hit than miss. I’ve been spoilt by the faaabulous Med-Fusion food at my guesthouse and clearly have been frequenting the wrong hawkers. Some terrible soups full of entrails, some gluggy noodles: I’ve obviously been walking right past the good stuff. Because of this, and because I leave Cambodia in two days, I decided to splash out on the ne plus ultra in Modern Cambodian cooking and go to Malis, a new and slightly flashy restaurant near the Independence Monument and all in all, I’d say this was a good decision.

Now, you know you’re in a flashy restaurant when the lights are so low that reading the menu is difficult and you only really see your food for a split second when your camera flashes. Candlelight, schmandlelight. With the aid of an extra candle, I was able to both read the menu and see the restaurant. Plenty of frangipani trees, tasteful tasteful burgundy walls and dark wood and innumerable water features whose trickling drowned out the tasteful tasteful jazz tinkling in the background. To help me through the menu, I was presented with an appetiser of pickled greens with a tamarind chilli sauce and a shot of mango juice: salty, sour, hot, and sweet: excellent.

To begin! The chef’s seafood selection… At this juncture, I’m still wondering whether I should have ordered the scallops with green peppercorns… I’ll never know. Instead, my scallop encounter was limited to magical Cambodian scallops (magical because there are three of them per shell…) stir-fried with diced red and green capsicum, mango, and mushies. Pretty good, but nothing spectacular. Next to the scallops lay a handful of baked clams, spiked, I think, with Cambodian fishpaste. Clams are close to my heart both because of their pivotal role in clam chowder and their Italian incarnation as vongole. These shellsters I would have classified as cockles rather than clams, but who am I to be picky. Intensely brackish bites of the sea, some of which needed a fair amount of coaxing to leave their shells. Fortunately, I’m not just a lover, I’m a fighter. No pugilism was required for the prawn cakes which were extremely easy to eat, if a tiny little bit nondescript. As someone for whom the entrée is usually the high-point of the meal, this did not augur fabulously well, particularly as the whole lot was unnecessarily strewn with julienne vegetables.

Nothing is normal in Phnom Penh, however, and the relationship of entrée to main would seem to be no exception as the eggplant and crab salad was a winner, flashing lights and clanging bells included. Crab meat and eggplant flesh served in the hollowed eggplant bellies with tiny peanuts, basil, chilli, fresh coconut, fish sauce and who knows what else. Texture! Flavour! Crab! Eggplant! I wasn’t entirely certain that the marriage of crab and eggplant would be a happy one but I suppose any marriage is a high stakes undertaking. It seemed like the middling risk option on the menu – not quite as safe as the good old amok (I’m still loving the fact that Cambodia’s national dish is called amok), papaya salad, beef and bamboo and spicy shrimps but considerably less risky than the stuffed frog’s legs. Daaaamn, though, it was tasty.

I would have tried any and all of the desserts and it was with reluctance that I passed over the pomelo custard with fresh ginger, the jasmine, ginger, and honey mousse, and the corn tapioca. I have a sentimental attachment to crème brûlée and was honour bound to order the pumpkin brûlée, although not without regret at venturing away from the principled terrain of Mod-Cambodian into the badlands of Mod-Cambodian-French-Fusion. It was only via my flash that I was able to see how darn orange it was. Lord only knows how you make a pumpkin custard but this was nicely managed, thick and smooth, like a creamy pumpkin pie filling without the cinnamon. I couldn’t taste the rice wine sauce but this might have had something to do with the chillies I downed earlier in the meal.

Anyway, Mod-Cambod. It’s the next big thing. Watch out for it, and remember that you heard it here first.