Psychotic ladyboys & flesh-eating lizards

Red Night Zone_1Bangkok pulp writer James Newman has hammered out another shot-from-the-hip fast-as-they-come thriller, featuring recovering alcoholic and PI Joe Dylan drifting through the Zone, a sly reference to William Burrough’s Interzone – a place where all races lead to the bottom, all smiles are false and everyone is out to kill everyone else for a few bucks. Like Burroughs, Newman both despises and admires the darkness he has witnessed and he manages to harvest a modicum of tragedy in his newest story.

Joe Dylan gets involved with a bar girl who turns up dead soon after. As he begins to investigate her suspicious suicide, he soon slips into a criminal web of fetish sex, human sacrifice and black magic and turns from the hunter to the hunted, with blow dart-shooting killers of uncertain gender on his trail. Even dwarves and the Ramayana provide cameos.

In fact, all the standard ghouls of the Bangkok night make an appearance, from psychotic ladyboys to flesh-eating monitor lizards. The writing is more fluid and assured than in Newman’s other novel, Bangkok Express, and Dylan’s journey through a world so rancid that the grime almost oozes through the screen – if one were to read the e-book edition of Red Night Zone – never falters. The circumstances of this particularly tragic reality are well explored, occasionally too deeply.

The heart of Newman’s literary mission – the crossing of Beat-style writing and observations of Thailand’s turgid world of sexpats – is not as obvious a concept as it may sound. The seedy Thai underworld is easy to describe and difficult to bring to life. Exuberant gaudiness and total degradation, detachment and vast suffering are opposites intrinsic to the Bangkok reality yet difficult to convey without either descending into tabloid journalism styles or out-and-out sleaze. Newman, by looking back to the Beats and the mass paperback culture of the ’40s and ’50s, is just far enough away from depravity to sail his ship. For the most part his observations on the monstrous are spot on, though his notion that the foreign Johns are the greater victims in the sordid death-sex-life dance that moves along the streets of downtown Bangkok will not be palatable to all readers. One presumes that Newman doesn’t care. The course is charted, there’s wind in the sails and Joe Dylan is likely to revisit the Zone somewhere near you soon. He will just slip into a barstool and turn his head and the chapter will start something like this: ‘The Nazi bargirl lit a cigarette and asked for a drink.’

Of course she did.

Red Night Zone, by James Newman, is available for Kindle now on Amazon.co.uk priced $4.95.

Secret shame

SATURDAY 27 | Fourteen years ago, a senior member of Cambodia’s government was asked why the country seemed indifferent to the sexual exploitation of its children by expats. He replied thus: “Do you not think that Cambodians do these things yourself?”

Contrary to its international reputation as a haven for Western paedophiles, Cambodia has long harboured a secret shame: the majority of child sex offenders that plague its provinces are not from far-off lands, but native Khmers – a phenomenon not readily admitted by the proud descendants of Angkor.

The misconception that sexual depravity is a foreign problem arose following the arrival of the United Nations Transitional Authority on Cambodia in 1991. Such was the sexual appetite of the 22,000 soldiers, police officers and administrators who made up the peacekeeping force that within two years the number of prostitutes in Phnom Penh swelled from 6,000 to more than 20,000.

For the men who offend, the lure is linked inextricably to myths of luck, prosperity, even immortality.

In The Virginity Trade, a documentary by British film-maker Matthew Watson, one such buyer describes the forces that drove him to deflower a child. “Cambodian culture regards virginity as very important. It is most sought after by Cambodian men, so I decided I was ready to pay for the thing men want the most. I was told that if I had sex with a virgin girl, it would increase my powers; enhance my beauty. That is, stay young forever.”

This concept of sexual alchemy can be traced back to Taoism, a web of philosophical and religious traditions that has been shaping Asian beliefs for more than 2,000 years. In Secret Instructions Concerning The Jade Chamber, a fourth-century Taoist text on harmonising male and female energies, the author describes the potential rewards: ‘Now men who wish to obtain great benefits do well in obtaining women who don’t know the Way. They should also initiate virgins [into sex], and their facial colour will come to be like [that of] virgins. However, [man] is only distressed by [a woman] who is not young. If he gets one above 14 or 15 but below 18 or 19, it is most beneficial… The masters preceding me, who transmitted the Way to each other, lived to be 3,000 years old. Those who combine this with medicines can become immortal.’

But what of the victims? Watson’s Girls Of Phnom Penh, also screening, examines their plight.

WHO: Everyone with a conscience
WHAT: The Virginity Trade and Girls Of Phnom Penh screening
WHERE: Meta House, Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 7pm July 27
WHY: The secret shame of child sex exposed

Nowhere people

FRIDAY 26 | In the Western media, the word ‘Myanmar’ rarely appears far from the phrase ‘former military dictatorship’ and barely a day goes by but we aren’t privy to a picture of President Thein Sein, peace prize nomination in back pocket, glad-handing with Washington big-wigs and signing Chinese free-trade agreements with a flourish. It’s as if the ’88 revolution, the imprisonment of Aung San Suu Kyi and 60 years of military dictatorship were generally things which, for the incumbent Burmese leader, were unpleasant little hiccups which happened to other people. Some of those unfortunate other people are the Rohingya. Members of Muslim minority resident in Myanmar for almost two centuries, the Rohingya are nonetheless denied Burmese statehood and are subject to a campaign of government-sanctioned hostility so intense it has been described by Human Rights Watch as ‘ethnic cleansing’. Tens of thousands have fled to the border region to escape the violence only to find themselves adrift and alone, corralled in no-man’s land. Myanmar’s forgotten minority, they are exiles to nowhere, as documented in Al Jazeera’s new report The Hidden Genocide and the film Rohingyas In Exile, both screening tonight.

WHO: The culturally inquisitive
WHAT: The Hidden Genocide and Rohingyas In Exile screenings
WHERE: Meta House, Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 7pm July 26
WHY: The Rohingya may be exiled, but they’re not forgotten

Tangled up in the blues

HE’S BEEN NOMINATED FOR nine Grammys; shared Newark Festival’s stage with the Rolling Stones’ Mick Taylor; is signed by legendary bass player Andy Fraser – and, in his native UK, he’s barely old enough to vote. Tobi Earnshaw, just 18 years old and already being critically compared to rock monoliths John Mayer, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Eric Clapton, is rather more boy-next-door than such accolades might imply. Until, that is, his fingertips meet the strings of a guitar. What happens next shouldn’t be possible for someone who produced an unholy cacophony when he cradled one for the very first time aged 12, but the success of his debut album Spirit In Me, recorded just three years later, suggests the improbable is precisely what this young, London-born biker does best. The only artist handpicked by Andy Fraser, of Free fame, for his label Mctrax International, Tobi is poised to release his second album as he sets out in August on his first tour of Asia (expect workshops and performances at ICAN International School and The Youth School in Phnom Penh). The Advisor cornered Tobi in the studio to talk man-crushes, selling his soul to the Devil and being described by dmme.net as the ‘British answer to Justin Bieber’.

Dad was a saxophonist, but you picked up your first instrument relatively late.
We had this guitar which one of Dad’s old band mates had given to him. I found it in his room, picked it up and thought: ‘I’ll try to play it.’ I went downstairs and said to Dad: ‘Is this a chord?’ ‘Um, no…’ I’d made this noise that was absolutely awful, so he showed me a basic A chord and an E chord and then said to me: ‘Do you actually want to learn the guitar?’ At the time my parents owned a theatre school and there was a student whose dad was a session musician called Billy Liesegang – he’s played with Nina Hagen, David Bowie, Red Hot Chili Peppers – and he’d lent me a guitar. I hated singing at the time.

And your mum had to blackmail you into singing at your first open mic?
It was even worse than that! She didn’t expect me to sing; that’s why she said she’d buy me a guitar if I did. I was 14 at this point, which was when I started really getting into the blues. This is when I first found Gary Moore. Mum said: ‘If you learn the Gary Moore song Still Got The Blues and play the solo, I’ll buy you a new guitar.’ So I played it and got my new guitar and I’ve been singing ever since. After that I really got into John Mayer, because I saw him at the Crossroads Guitar Festival with Eric Clapton. That’s when I started songwriting: I looked him up on YouTube and was absolutely amazed with the way he writes his songs. I became obsessed; I call him my man-crush. That’s how deep it goes. You can imagine: I’m sitting at school with my headphones on and my guitar, learning Hotel California, while everyone else is listening to the stereo. Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Winter, Gary Moore, George Benson…

You’ve been compared to some extraordinary musicians already: from folk you’ve cited as influences, such as Mayer and Vaughn, the list goes wildly off the deep end and you’ve been called – and I quote – ‘Britain’s Justin Bieber.’ How do you feel about that? In certain places, that’s considered an insult…
[Laughs] It is! It is! To be perfectly honest, I try to look at it from a positive point of view: he’s definitely done something right. Maybe if it’s also being said that I’m influenced by John Mayer and Stevie Ray Vaughn I can be more of a respected musician. You won’t be hearing any Justin Bieber covers from me, I can tell you that. If you’re going to introduce me to anyone while I’m in Cambodia, the worst thing to say would be: ‘He’s the English version of Justin Bieber.’

Have you been asked to define your own sound yet?
As a musician I’m really critical, so if I was asked to define myself I don’t know; I just sort of sing a melody and try to stay in tune! There are pop magazines who say: ‘We won’t take you because you’re too blues for us.’ Then there are blues magazines that say: ‘We won’t take you because you’re not blues enough.’ I’ve had interviews with MOBO… and there’s something else I was going to say but I’ve completely forgotten what. I’m having a senior moment and I’m only 18! I’ve been doing radio interviews all week and this keeps happening; it’s ridiculous!

Let’s talk more about these interviews. How does it feel being catapulted into the professional rock realm at your age?
Three days after my GCSE exams, I flew over to America to do a three-month tour to promote my first album, which is where that Justin Bieber-ish video, Brighten Up My Day, happened – I was only 15 and signed to Andy Fraser, the bass player with Free. Everyone wanted to talk to Andy and hear what he’d done in his past, maybe bringing me in at the end because I’m his new project. I’d just sit there and be really nervous. Now I’ve been doing interviews for a couple of years, I just roll with it. People ask me: ‘Have you figured out what you’re going to say yet?’ Well, no. Everything comes naturally. When you say it naturally, you mean it.

Do you remember your first meeting with Andy Fraser?
Yes I do! It was actually quite similar to this; you meet all the important people on Skype [Laughs]. I had my guitar in my hand – that was the only difference. He emailed me and we sent over the Brighten Up My Day video before he’d remixed it then Nothing’s Going To Stop Us, from my first album. We talked on Skype and then another email came through with a recording contract and publishing contract. Being 15 at the time, you don’t really understand these things. Even now it doesn’t seem like it’s happening. I don’t know whether it’s that I’m the least excitable person, but I just thought: ‘Yeah, that’s cool.’ The cool thing was when he flew me out to America for the meeting: I get a flight to LAX and I’m there with my dad, who’s my headmaster as well, and we got picked up in a limo. It was a bit strange because I’d never met him before, but I know who he is because one of the first songs I learned was The Stealer, by Free. My guitar teacher’s band was named after that song. So I went up to him, he smiled at me and gave me a hug and goes: ‘Do you want some sushi?’ By the end of the trip, it felt like we’d known each other for years. Andy’s very warm and open.

You’ve said in a previous interview that he spends most of his time locked in the hotel toilet when you’re on tour together because you can’t stop playing guitar.  
[Laughs] There are two truths to that: I play guitar loads and he does get fed up with it sometimes, but not as much as my parents because I play during Coronation Street and that’s on every night. The other truth is that Andy does spend most of his time in the toilet: after every meal he’ll go to the toilet, brush his teeth and do his mouthwash. The other day we were sitting outside in the smouldering heat and he spent ages in there. Is he having a shower in there or something?!

Let’s talk about your first album: nine tracks, recorded when you were just 15.
We did it in Andy’s house; he has a studio there. We did the album in three weeks. We’d have a day to do each thing: a day to do the guitar; a day to do the vocals. It was an amazing experience, listening to Andy talk – especially when I was younger, because now I’ve heard the majority of his stories but they never, ever get boring [Laughs]. One of the stories was about when him and Paul Rodgers got together and helped each other out by finishing each other’s songs. They learned a lot about how to write. I’ve met Paul, but because Free split up they don’t really talk much; even Andy says they’re never really on the same page.

There can be more politics in music than there is in actual politics.
Funny you should say that because – and this is another of Andy’s little stories – when Free first got together, Andy said to Paul Kossoff and Paul Rodgers: ‘Right, now, I’m the leader.’ Apparently they just looked at each other and Paul Rodgers was really angry. When I listen to their songs – I listen to Rodgers in Bad Company and the Free stuff – the choruses are so much like each other; very blues based. That’s what I like about working with Andy: he can teach me this stuff. Having someone else look over your song and bring it all back to the centre. I’ll do some R&B and then he’ll somehow bring it back to pop-rock. I don’t know how he does it. It’s great because I have half-written songs: I’ll write a guitar riff down on my phone, start it and then stop it. It’s great to get a different perspective. A lot of people say you should write a song all in one go, but if I do that and then go back to it I think: ‘What was all that about? Why was I whining so much?’

Hang on: don’t you have to be 60 and toothless to write in the great blues tradition?
[Laughs] If it would get me somewhere, maybe we could knock a couple of teeth out and I could shave all my hair off! I remember when I was younger, listening to Robert Johnson and trying to sell my soul to the Devil in my bedroom. I was about 13 and I had this little red guitar I’d chipped away at and sanded down. I was sitting in my room, playing this cheap bit of rubbish, thinking about Johnson and thinking I’d sell my soul if I could be one of the best guitarists in the world. I said it just like that, almost with contempt, but I don’t know if it’s happened yet.

Where were we? Ah yes, the first album.
I do that a lot, sorry. You can imagine what my room looks like, comparing it to my mind! Yeah, first album: one of the first songs I wrote was called There’s Always Hope. As you can see, I go off on tangents. When I was 14 I got robbed: three boys took my phone. They didn’t even want it; they put it on the floor and stamped on it and they took a bite out of my Crunchie bar! You can imagine what happened next. I went home and started playing this groovy sort of blues riff. I’d play it all the time and my parents used to get so annoyed with me. Rather than going: ‘Oh, I got robbed yesterday…’

[Singing] Da nah nah nah nah… Wait, I know this one!
[Laughs] It was more about OK, what was that? One day out of my life, just like many others. It’s about turning it around. People can hurt you and hate you… and what? You keep on going; you keep the right mentality. I don’t really care, to be honest, because I’m going somewhere even if it’s not with music and I’ve always believed that – not in a big-headed way, but I’ve always felt that. It’s like a hint that someone’s given you; it’s there in your mind. You’ve got the drive to want to do something and that’s enough. That’s the way I go about writing most of my songs.

Your second album is due out soon. What’s changed since the first?
I was only 15 when I did the first and I listened to the critics – as a musician, I criticise myself a lot but it means more coming from someone else – and it was all: ‘It’s very good but he’s still very young and naive.’ This next album, I want to make it more like I’ve moved on because that was the main thing that stuck in my head: ‘young and naive’. I’ve always been one of those people who want to be older than they are. Ever since I was 13, I was going on 30 anyway – that’s what my mum used to say. Seeing as how I hang around all the old rock musicians, I sort of adopt their way of speaking – in the good way and the bad way.

How far does the new album go in communicating that you’re no longer ‘young and naive’?
I think I could have done better, but I’m always going to criticise myself. I try to be positive, especially in interviews otherwise it seems like I’m moaning all the time, because that’s what I normally do! But talking about the songs, they’re more about a teenager – I say that and I hate myself for calling myself a teenager – there are songs on there, like Lips Of Sin, that I hope show my maturity. That’s one of the songs I’ve written that’s like a story.

Lips Of Sin? That’s something someone your age should know nothing about! Is your mother there? Can I have a word with her?
[Laughs] That’s why the door’s closed! I don’t want her listening to it, but it’s a story I have to tell. For my 18th birthday we went out to a club. A girl I knew turned up quite randomly and we were in the VIP area. She was dancing about – the lyrics are ‘Played me all night, she was reeling me in’ – but I’m not very good at reading the signals. We were dancing and then she pushed me away. We got a cab back – I paid, of course – and we’re sitting there. She pours a drink, gives it to me and I go in for a little kiss then she pushes me away and says: ‘Right, I’m off. See you later.’ What was that all about? Leading you on and then… I don’t know. So that was my very interesting 30-second summing up of what was at least an eight-hour saga.

WHO: Tobi
WHAT: “Likened to John Mayer and Robin Thicke, TOBI is actually right in the middle of the two, with a smooth sound enriched by perfect guitar sweeps.” – Music-News.com
WHERE: Latin Quarter, Street 178; The Village, #1 Street 360; Memphis Pub, Street 118 and The Quay, Riverside
WHEN: August 16 (Latin Quarter), 17 (The Village), 24 (Memphis) & 27 (The Quay)
WHY: “Having Tobi not only on the Grammy eligibility list but in multiple categories is confirmation of my initial instincts that here is a new, young artist to be reckoned with” – Andy Fraser

Bowled over

Back in pre-quake days, the Samurai Bowl in the bustling heart of Christchurch (New Zealand) was, in my humble opinion, home to the best Japanese curry outside Nippon. Alas, the tectonic gods put pay to the ‘Bowl’, but I still have fond memories of the signatory curry with its steamy rice, tender beef and lingering aftertaste.

Since then I have searched for a worthy successor and perhaps, now, I have found it at Malaman, a fresh new establishment on humble Street 19. Or not so humble!

Street 19 is presently enjoying a renaissance of sorts with several good value and exciting eateries popping up along its frontage, with Malaman simply the latest in a mounting list of gastronomic options.

Situated at #128A, the restaurant is devoted to those two staples of Japanese ‘Meiji fast food’: my beloved curry and gyudon (‘beef bowl’). Add to this miso soup, dim sum and BBQ pork buns, and visions of Tokyo’s famed low-cost dining district, the Golden Gai, come to mind.

But first, a little Japanese curry 101: For those familiar with South Asian curries, the Japanese version is a milder, sweeter affair (mild being the optimal word). The British brought curry, along with cricket, to Japan during the ‘period of opening’, the Meiji Era (1868 – 1912), and while the curries stuck the cricket did not (the Japanese opted for baseball instead). Also, over this time, the beef bowl, with its shredded meat atop a bed of rice, evolved as another popular staple.

‘So, what’s the secret to a good Japanese curry?’ I ask Yusuke, Malaman’s owner. “It is quality beef and the right rice. I get my beef from America, the rice from Vietnam. The rice must be short-grained and sticky. This gives the texture you need to complement the curry.”

‘So, why the restaurant?’ is the obvious next question. “I was inspired by my mother’s cooking. In Japan, curry and beef bowls are regarded as fast food; they are cheap, but well prepared. I saw an opportunity in Phnom Penh for this food. Good quality, cheap price: that is what I want to achieve.”

With a meal for two – a beef and curry bowl ($3.50 each), chicken nuggets ($2.50) and drinks (draught Angkor $1) – leaving us both satisfied, Yusuke is on the way to achieving his goals.

Quibbles? It would have been great to have a Sapporo or Asahi to have washed the curry down, although Yusuke promises some good sake in the near future. There will also be some worthy additions to the presently simple menu, including two of my favourites – okonomiyaki (Japanese pizza) and karaage (‘fried chicken’).

Finally, I ask a question that had been bugging me: ‘What’s with the name?’ “Actually, malaman is a Filipino word; it means: ‘I know it’. I have many friends in the Philippines, so I wanted to use this word.”
Overall, Malaman’s gets a big tick and I think you, too, will be bowled over by its fare. In fact, I know it!

Malaman, #128A Street 19; 078 646524.

Reggae reinvented

THURSDAY 25 | Dub Addiction Meets Kampuchea Rockers Uptown is an epic fusion of reggae and dub with Khmer saravan. Released by Hong Kong label Metal Postcards, it’s Dub Addiction’s most ambitious project yet. Dirty and raw are adjectives that sit well with the album, the hallmark of which is a more “organic, authentic dub sound” than the band’s eponymous first release. Says German music producer Professor Kinski, known to friends as Jan Mueller: “The whole album sounds more epic, more massive, more dub than the first one.” The 13 tracks feature a veritable Who’s Who of the local scene. Cambodian hip hop icons Pou Khlaing and Nen Tum make guest appearances on The Fruit Song and Nigerian vocalist Okoro Elias Jefferson debuts on Okoro, but the main ragamuffin toasters are MC Curly and DJ Khla, the latter someone Kinski compares to Cutty Ranks, Sizla and Anthony B. From the moment the CD clicks into the disc drive and begins to spin, sights and sounds familiar to Phnom Penh long-termers ooze through the mixer to create a distinctly Cambodian soundscape. A high point – if you’ll pardon the pun – is The Mighty Plan, on which “the voice of LSD guru Terence McKenna is lecturing about mankind’s first contact with aliens over an ultra-massive slow shuffle dub groove of Lee Perry – one of the best instrumentals on the album”. And it can only be right and proper to follow such a track with a song entitled Ganja Dub, although it’s clearly far too fast for anyone genuinely out of their mind on marijuana. “We intend to conquer the universe,” a disembodied voice declares as the final track drives its mega-phat electro dub juggernaut into your sternum. Wobble bass slams you against a sonic wall as distorted e-guitar solos slash at your face, fishing your brains right out through your nose. You Have Been Warned.

WHO: Dub Addiction
WHAT: Reggae reinvented
WHERE: Equinox, Street 278
WHEN: 9pm July 25
WHY: Somewhere, in that great dancehall in the sky, King Tubby should be smoking a fat one and smiling

Joe Wrigley

THURSDAY 25 | Stetsons and spurs are hardly common sights in the British midlands, yet the post-industrial landscape of Stoke-on-Trent – more commonly associated with football hooligans – has somehow spawned this thoughtful, softly spoken country singer clad in jeans, plaid shirt and, yes, a slightly battered cowboy hat. Joe Wrigley, the 33-year-old former bass player from “now moderately successful indie band” Fists, was once told by his aunt that he couldn’t sing. So much for all that. “To be fair, I couldn’t sing – in a normal, classical sense. Over time I managed to evoke some kind of voice which ended up being quite different. The songs I like and can sing happen to be country songs, because they lend themselves to a thin, nasally voice: Hank Williams, Jimmy Rogers, Johnny Cash. I wrote a song about Johnny Cash, that simplicity and rawness; that’s what I always wanted to sound like. I knew I could do simple, direct songs, stuff from the heart, but not flowery songs; definitely Hank Williams. I’m starting to learn more about where I am, so I’ve started to write about that a little bit… I wrote a song called Shiva recently, which is trying to get at some of the darkness of this place. My writing’s quite figurative; a little abstract. There is a lot of love songs, a couple of funny songs and a couple of songs that are so vague I don’t even know what they’re about yet, to be honest.”

WHO: Joe Wrigley
WHAT: Country originals and covers
WHERE: The Village, #1 Street 360
WHEN: 7:30pm July 25
WHY: British bloke in a cowboy hat!

Cute little heartbreaker

The food is good at Fox, the service near excellent and the urban-industrial interiors as slick as anything in Soho or East London. The 17-dish starter menu includes shareable small plates such as salmon skewers ($4.9), Ricotta cheese balls ($4) and grilled Spanish sausage ($6). Soups, salads, pastas and mains fill out the rest of the board. Service is snappish, the staff friendly. The cement-and-exposed-metal décor, complete with oak caskets and an above-ground wine cellar, affects a culinary swagger somewhere between classic French vineyard and upper-crust vino lounge. Yet as near-outstanding as the dining experience may be, the vino lounge remains the raison d’etre of Fox, whose wine list stretches to near-triple digits (and the prices most certainly do). The cheap stuff – Anakena Cabernet Sauvignon from Chile – registers just $19 a bottle. But there are dozens of other choices north of $100, with the 2007 Chateau Lynch Bages from France topping the list at $280. No one ever said being foxy was cheap.

Fox Wine Bar & Bistro, 104 Sothearos Blvd; 090 625656.   

Perogies in Phnom Penh

“I think I feel a cholesterol attack coming on,” stage-whispered my friend Antonio Pineda, actor, musician, poet and general man-about-town. We were standing at the door of the recently opened Bistro Corner and Kelvin Lemishka was telling us about his evolving menu.

First up was the penne with spicy Italian sausage, sundried tomato and artichoke. Next was the cheese toast spread made with cheddar and Danish blue. The bread is home-made, of course, as is all the food at The Bistro Corner. By the time he got to the pepper steak with a lashing of Swiss cheese and whiskey sauce, Antonio and I looked at each other and groaned softly.

We had just eaten our way through the weekend all-you-can-eat buffet that runs from 8am to 2pm and costs $4.50. After scrambled eggs and sausages and toast and perogies (dumplings of unleavened dough), the mere thought of more food was overwhelming. But we would be back. Nothing on the menu is over $5, so it’s an affordable eatery.

Kelvin is a fourth-generation Ukrainian chef who hails from Alberta. For the geographically challenged, that is plonk in the centre of Canada – read ‘in the middle of nowhere’ – and one province over from where I was born. Since my Norwegian grandmother lived in a Ukrainian village, Kelvin and I speak the same food language: perogies, borsht, verekeki, kublisah, petihere.

From this Eastern European base he introduces a fusion with Greek, Italian, Khmer and Filipino dishes. Combinations that don’t sound like they would work in fact do: take perogies with Italian fillings, for example. Or how about pork adobo with a cabbage roll rather than rice? And the beer-marguerites. Careful, though: the Cambodian beer and tequila come in equal measures and this concoction is best classified as downright dangerous.

“It is all about the quality of the ingredients and making things from scratch. Take our maple pork sausages, for example. I grind the meat myself and use real maple syrup. We plan on setting up a kurobuta (Black Berkshire pig) farm. It will keep us supplied with the best gourmet pork in the country. The French fries are cut by hand. Our bread is baked on the premises and follows a recipe handed down from my grandmother.”

Having run restaurants in Calgary, Hong Kong and New York, Kelvin has the kitchen in his blood. He wants to get The Bistro Corner up and running and then step back to concentrate on other business projects. The plan is to train  Khmer staff. Somaly is his manager and he plans to set up a profit-sharing plan. “Give the staff a vested interest in the business. They will see that when it makes money they do, too. Simple.”

If you’re going to waddle up to The Bistro Corner weekend buffet marathon for seconds or thirds, wear pants with an expandable waistline. Those perogies like my grandmother used to make are tasty and you will keep going back for more.

The Bistro Corner, #63 Street 172; 097 2617875.   

Perchance to dream

WEDNESDAY 24 | Le Sommeil D’Or (‘Golden Slumbers’), by Davy Chou, resurrects the myths and legends of Cambodia’s lost cinema. Through survivors’ stories and the search for remnants of their era in modern Phnom Penh, the film reveals the vital importance movies had for an entire generation, as well as their complex legacy.

WHO: Film buffs
WHAT: Golden Slumbers screening, with filmmaker Q&A
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 7pm July 24
WHY: Discover Cambodia’s ‘lost cinema’