Byline: Richard Sterling

Drinkin’ in the rain

About this time a year ago I checked the forecast. Thunder showers Sunday was the prediction. Perfect, says I. Monsoon Cocktails and dinner in the rain. As Sunday’s clouds gathered, I hastened to one of the many canopied places on Street 172 and ducked in just as the sky billowed with fat monsoon stratocumuli. I ordered Jack on the rocks. In moments, proper Niagaras of rain were beating a lusty tattoo upon the awning, falling in heavy sheets mere inches from my body. It was that lavish, roaring, seething rain that only the monsoon can muster. Dueling bolts of lightning flashed and clashed and the mighty thunder bellowed magnificently. I held my drink out under the pearly waterfall, and within the space of two thunderclaps the glass brimmed. Behold! A Monsoon Cocktail.

Rainy season should last ‘til October with thundershowers and storms about three a week. Check with weather sites for up-to-the-minute forecasts. Then grab your brolly, pack your poncho, and come to these rainy day haunts.

Luna
The place for drinking during light drizzles, when the air is alive with gossamer droplets that caress rather than fall. Try sitting beneath the spreading umbrella of the big tree in the courtyard. A dish of mixed olives and a glass of wine garnished with a few dewdrops make a decadent afternoon snack.
#6 Street 29.

One More
This is the place for a bistro style dinner under the awning when it’s coming down in buckets. The red tile floor is rimmed by luxuriant potted palms. Peer through that verdant screen at the rain as it drums a soft timpani solo on the awning above. Its gathered waters pour a crystal sheen onto the plants below. Car tires sluicing through the watery street make earthly counterpoint to the music from on high.
#16Eo Street 294.

The Terrace
An old colonial villa on a quiet corner in Tuol Sleng neighborhood. It’s good for food or drink in any kind of wet. In gentle rains, the outdoor wicker tables are close enough to reach out and touch the falling drops. Within, on creaky old wooden floors, it’s open and airy. It keeps you close to Meteora, goddess of the storm, but safe from her worst fits.
#43 Street 95.

Che Culo
Perfect for drinks at the big open window counter. The deep, softly lit room is well regarded as a place of refuge from the summer sun, but on those misty days and nights you may find yourself gazing dreamily at the downpour as you contemplate your drink in the sheltering dry.
#6B Street 302.

11 Happy Backpacker
Food, drink, music and laughter under the deluge. It’s a sprawling rooftop cabaña overlooking the old quarter, a place to rock out as the rain falls. Sit at the long counter overlooking St. 136 if you don’t mind a little spray in the face. Or you can take refuge from the storm amid conversation pits deeper within.
#87 Street 136.

Shake or stir, but always sip

I sat at the dimly lit, elegant bar of Zino in the South-of-Sihanouk Gourmet Ghetto. Outside on Street 294 the sun-blasted asphalt was baking, heat waves rising from the surface. But I was in the cool depths, contemplating the dish of chilled oysters on the half-shell laid before me and planning a fitting accompaniment for the succulent bivalves. Custom called for a glass of full-bodied Chardonnay, or a dry Sherry, or even a cold beer. But I was in a rebellious mood. I called for a Martini.

Usually a Martini in this town is a miserable slug of cheap gin or vodka, indifferently shaken and poured into a warm glass. It’s anything for which the barkeep has no other name. But Mr. Vireak, the head barman at Zino, has always shown himself as a man who knows his business. “Rek,” says I, “Do me a Martini.” There then followed the mixological interrogation that only a pro would exhibit: Gin or vodka? Dry or sweet? Shaken or stirred? Straight up, or on the rocks? Olive or twist?

The Martini, with only two ingredients and a garnish, is elegantly simple, yet unforgiving of mistakes. It dates back to 1862 when the famous “Professor” Jerry Thomas concocted the first one. He was head bartender at San Francisco’s Occidental Hotel where he tended to the daily needs of his “patients.” His simple yet perfect libation became the drink of choice for literati such as Jack London and Henry Miller, and the official drink of the ruling class and those who would aspire to it. FDR and Winston Churchill mixed their own to the definitive recipe, while James Bond gave detailed instructions for a somewhat idiosyncratic mix using equal parts of vodka and gin.

This is not a drink to knock back in haste. It needs to be sipped, savoured and meditated upon. The story goes that FDR always made two of them last 30 minutes apiece. Hence, the “Cocktail Hour.” He always made his own, and he made ‘em “dirty,” adding a teaspoon of olive brine to the mix. He shook a pair for himself and King George VI when he and the British monarch plotted world strategies during a state visit in 1939. They each had two. How it might have affected the ensuing war is not recorded.

So now I watch Rek make a drink fit for a president or a king. He pours premium gin generously over ice in a cocktail shaker. The traditional drink should not be too dry. So he gives it a good splash of vermouth, making a cocktail, not a straight shot. He shakes it into submission. Shakes it ‘til it cries for mercy. Shakes it so that the botanicals in the gin will volatilise and so reveal themselves to my senses while still remaining glacially cold. When he pours it into a chilled glass, a patina of ice crystals floats upon the surface. Now my oysters are in good company.

Zino Wine Bar. #12, Street 294.
023 998 519

You say tomato, I say gazpacho

Hot season is upon us. Instead of sweating into your bobor, try cooling down with a bowl of chilled gazpacho, a tasty Spanish delicacy fit for an emperor (or, in this case, empress)

As the author of the book World Food: Spain (Lonely Planet), I’m always on the lookout for things Iberian. And while there are a surprising number of Spaniards here in El Phnom, the Spanish connection is much older than you might think. Spaniards and their Portuguese cousins were the first Europeans to set foot in this town. Missionaries like Gaspar de la Cruz (1556) and soldiers of fortune like Blas Ruiz de Hernán González (1592) established a string of outposts along the Tonle Sap from here to Lovek, the interim capital at the time. De la Cruz is said to have harvested a few souls, then went on his way. Gonzalez meddled in Cambodian politics and came to a bad end. But they (or their fellows) left something behind of lasting value: the tomato.

Tomatoes, and many other common fruits and vegetables, are indigenous to the Americas. They were unknown to Europe or Asia before Columbus (1492). From Mexico and Peru the Spanish went seeking further fields of conquest, their ships laden with the abundance of the New World. They came here to PP. Now, there is no historic document that says, “On this day, a bunch of Spanish dudes arrived bearing tomatoes, and they were good.” But we know that the seeds were in Spanish ships out of the Americas bound for the Orient. And we know that they spread them widely. Even to here. So there is a special Spanish connection when we enter a local house of degustation and order gazpacho.

Gazpacho, often defined simply as cold tomato soup, is so much more. It’s not easy to pin down and define with exactitude, but there are common threads: fresh tomatoes, Spanish olive oil, wine vinegar, garlic and bread incorporated into the dish or served alongside. It originated, as did so many European dishes, as peasant fare. And peasant fare often percolates its way up through the social strata, expanding and evolving in its usages. Its elevation from the Andalucian table to points beyond is credited to Eugenie de Montijo, the Spanish wife of the French Emperor Napoleon III in the 19th Century.

Where to find it? There is a well-known place in BKK1 serving a cup of tasteless red liquid called gazpacho. A lovely little garden café off Norodom offers a pink, sugary pudding desecrating the name gazpacho. And there is a fancy-schmancy joint near Monivong that serves a green glop with the sacred name. But the best gazpacho I’ve tasted here is at the French-owned Cyclo Hotel. It’s light, tangy and refreshing, seasoned to perfection and bearing a whiff of garlic in due proportion. Taken on the shady corner terrace on a sultry afternoon, it’s a tonic for tropical heat. Before dinner it’s a fine aperitif, stimulating the gastric juices in preparation for the great gastronomic labour ahead. Be sure to whisper thanks to the Empress Eugenia for the fine French connection.

Cyclo Hotel, #50Eo, Street 172. 023 992 128

Nacho, nacho man

Imoved to Phnom Penh from Saigon for the nachos. Well, not entirely – but partly. It sounds absurd, but with ten thousand or so North American expats crowding the bars, pubs and hash houses of Ho Chi Minh City, there are only two that reliably offer the tasty little nubbin known as The Nacho.

Here in PP, though, I can nibble nachos daily. Nachos are necessary for all North Americans, as well as many of those who love or tolerate them. It’s hot out on the dusty streets. And as sure as night follows day, thirst follows heat. And beer follows thirst. And hunger follows beer. You see where I’m heading here? The wise innkeeper knows that the suds will continue to flow if the throat stays salty dry.

So just what is this dish called nachos? It is a bastard child conceived of the Mexican kitchen, adopted by the Tex-Mex kitchen, and embellished and beatified by the Cal-Mex kitchen. At its most elemental it is nothing more than a corn chip dressed with cheese, tarted up with salsa, and perhaps besmeared with frijoles refritos (a fried mash of pinto beans). It may be further cloaked with sour cream, bejeweled with jalapenos, enriched with meat, decked out with slices of olive and perfumed with cilantro. It can be either the temple virgin or the painted lady of Cal-Mex cuisine. At ballparks in the USA it is the neighborhood tramp. You will not find it in Mexico except where Americans and Canadians tend to loiter.

The nacho’s origin is largely unknown to the general population. Here’s the straight and skinny. It was in Texas in 1943 that a certain group of “ladies who lunch” went on a shopping trip to the Mexican town of Piedras Negras, just below the US/Mexico border. They decided to lunch at the Victory Club, where Senor Ignacio Anaya reigned over the kitchen. As with Caesar Cardini and the Caesar salad, he was short of goods at the time. So he cooked up some corn chips, slathered them with what he had, no doubt liberally lubricated the ladies with liquor, and served them his famine fare. The ladies loved it. Either they or he named the dish for Ignacio, but they used the diminutive: nacho.

The simplest formula for nachos is to pile corn chips on a platter, then cover them with salsa and grated cheese. The cook can add whatever else might be at hand. Trout fishermen just open a bag of chips, remove about a third of the volume, then pour in salsa, cheese, and whatever else, close the bag and shake the whole mess. At the other end of the spectrum, such as when the king comes to call, the cook might dress the nachos individually, so that they appear like canapes.

While there is much room for self expression in making nachos, it must be bore in mind that it is a simple dish. And simple things are unforgiving of mistakes. The easiest mistake with a simple dish is to use poorly chosen ingredients. People who make nachos with cheese-flavored Doritos need flogging. Mild cheese is a sin. Whole beans of any kind is simply beyond the pale. Spam is insane. And there is, here in PP, a popular purveyor of Mexican-like foodstuffs that uses chips made from flour rather than corn tortillas. I have no words for those miscreants.

The best nachos I’ve tasted in the Kingdom are those of the Cocina Cartel at #198 Street 19, right behind the Royal Palace. You can have them veggie style (which is not considered unflattering to their creator) or with grilled beef or roast pork. The roast pork version is a song in the mouth. The meat is fatly succulent, meltingly tender and salted to perfection. The chips are unadulterated corn. The salsa is tomato rich with a maestro’s balance of salt, sweet, tart and spice. Big slices of genuine pickled jalapeno pepper crown the composition. The only off-note is the garnish of lettuce chiffonade, which is as out of place as a harpsichord in a mariachi band. But brush that stuff off and you’ve got a fine dish of Ignacio Anaya. Good bye, Miss Saigon. Hello, Gorgeous.

Cocina Cartel, #198 Street 19