DON’T deny it: many expats seems to regard Khmer food as a rather poor cousin to the grand Thai and Vietnamese culinary traditions – more a day-to-day workhorse of a cuisine than a legitimate culinary art. But as any Khmer cook could tell you, there’s much more to the food of Cambodia than the same old loc lac, fish amok and street-side beef sticks.
Enter the upcoming Cambodian Cuisine Festival, which will bring together cooks from across Cambodia to show off their region-specific wares, both traditional and not-so-much. The new Cambodian Food Festival on March 29 and 30 at the Olympic Stadium was dreamed up as a fundraiser for NGO Pour un Sourire d’Enfant, which provides education, vocational training and other services to impoverished Cambodian youth.
Beginning at 5:30pm on Friday and Saturday, food, as implied in the title, will be one of the main event draws: at least 16 cooks will represent 16 Cambodian provinces, saving the culinarily curious a trip to Mondulkiri or Pailin to try out a local specialty (be it frogs, basil seed dessert or a simple amok). And it’s charitable: all proceeds from the event will go towards the activities of PSE, which claims to serve more than 6,500 disadvantaged Cambodian children.
In addition to the food stalls, there’s set to be authentic exhibitions of traditional Khmer martial arts; comedy shows; cultural arts and dancing, topped off with a dancefloor and a DJ as the night wears on and the snacks begin to settle — right in time for the typically dance-heavy holiday of Khmer New Year. There will be a playground and entertainment centre on offer for the kids.
If you want to take a stab at Khmer cooking in the pleasingly air conditioned comfort of your own home, or are looking for an exotic gift for the hard-to-please folks back home, PSE Communications Officer Alexis Guyot notes copies of the new The Sweet Taste of Cambodia dessert cookbook will be available at the festival for $20 in an English and French edition, with a $15 Khmer edition set to arrive shortly. “There will be a banana leaf-folding workshop so everyone will be invited to learn how to make cakes and Khmer pastries” from the book, adds Guyot, noting that the humble but versatile banana leaf forms the backbone of many of Cambodia’s most treasured sweet delights.
The Khmer Food Festival is expected to draw a whopping 8,000 participants over the course of two days, with 4,000 tickets already sold — indicating that a Khmer-food centric event of this kind may have been on the wish list of many Phnom Penh residents. “It’s for the Cambodians to get closer to their culture and for the foreigners to discover some Cambodian culture that is not necessarily the easiest to find,” says Guyot of the event, which is a new incarnation of PSE’s annual charity party. “The purpose of the event is to serve the food of Cambodian mothers. There’s nothing better than the food from our mother, so we invite many mothers to cook Cambodian dishes for us.”
Where to buy tickets for the Cambodian Food Festival? They will be $3 at the door at the Olympic Stadium, and can also be purchased at The Shop (both locations), all five branches of the Park Cafe, both Lotus Blanc restaurants, the Royal Inn, Saji Bumi, Samba, Wing, and Booloom Booloom. Tickets can also be ordered over the phone at 070 999 779, or at charity@nullsite-pse.org.