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Khmer cuisine has been significantly influenced by Thai and Vietnam traditional food, however it is a lot less spicy so that most Europeans can enjoy it without tears. Also, French cooking traditions are well known and assimilated by local chiefs. As with everywhere in Asia, the staple diet is rice. Rice served in all imaginable ways, fried rice, steamed rice, rice with pork or seafood, rice with vegetables or tropical fruits, rice with a special grass, with tree leaf, with sweet fruits, rice in desserts and even rice with rice! Chinese noodles are also very popular especially in everyday Khmer soups.
Favorite Khmer plates are "Amok fish" – a steamed fish in coconut milk with curry, served in small packets made of banana leafs. Another traditional favorite is "Lok-Lak" – beef with vegetables in a lime and black pepper sauce. Also try green mango and shrimp salad, it's an excellent entrée before dinner.
Cambodia is famous for its tropical fruits. Cambodian mangos are probably the best you will ever taste. Another tasty treasure are the passion fruits and mangosteens. Depending on the season, you can buy up to 30 different kinds of fresh fruits on any provincial market. Khmers have a strange tradition where they collect semi-ripe fruits and use them in soups and other dinner plates along with vegetables like carrots, onions or cucumbers. In Khmer cuisine pineapples and bananas often replace potatoes. You will find sweet pineapple cubes are often added to pork plates and to all kind of soups. Even to fried noodles or a barracuda barbeque.
Fortunately for the gourmet tourist, modern agricultural chemicals still not widely used in Cambodian rural farms and the country actually is a real oasis of natural, organic food. It is a paradise for eco-tourists. Cambodia certainly has the potential to become a major exporter of healthy food products in the near future.
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