Tag: EATING

Beyond the cooking class in Siem Reap

Written by André Ruys on 07/26/2019. Posted in eat in Siem Reap, Experience Cambodia, Khmer food.

When I was traveling through South East Asia 15 years ago, local food always was my main focus. Since many journeys were half leisure and half business, we mostly stayed in hotels. We had at least dinner there. but here and then we escaped and tried the local food next door. And sometimes we got invited to our guides or business partner‘s homes. We could experience what we call now beyond the cooking class.

Women selling honey at a local market in Siem Reap

Nothing is wrong with a cooking class as an activity in Siem Reap and other destinations in Cambodia. You usually go to the market, what for many tourists is an exciting experience itself. You indulge in exotics smells, watch Muslim women selling meat, jump aside when a motorbike drives between the stalls and may even help to catch a fish that tried to escape from the bucket.

With a tuk tuk full of groceries you head then back to the restaurant, hotel or a special place. Guest wash the food and prepare it for the actual cooking. Some hotels may even swap the food from the market with their own stock out of quality concerns. Then the cooking starts. You cut the greens, pound the paste and make nice decorations from a water melon and carrots.

Once the meal is done, guests sit together and the tour leader or guide gives further explanations about the food, the local life and when is the best time to grow and harvest rice. You learn a lot about a culture quite different from what you know in the west.

Why we want to go beyond the classic cooking class

At Dine With The Locals we go beyond the cooking class. We skip the market, because it saves time and many tourists have been to markets anyway. Another reason is that our hosts grow some of the food in their own backyard. Panha Yem in Battambang runs her own organic farm. You harvest some of the vegetables used in your meal with your own hands. Nue Thai in Siem Reap has a small garden, but shows you how the galangal plat looks like, let you pick a custard apple and make tea from jasmine flowers or lemongrass. If you like to eat eggs at Vannarith‘s home, you have to go to the chicken sheds behind the house and get some.

Cooking together is a great experience of local life in Cambodia — Prepare food with the family is more than a usual cooking class in Siem Reap.

As it is custom in Cambodia, every host offers three dishes. Those are most of the time the families favorite Cambodian food. Quite often families trade a recipe from generation to generation, with little variations. For example Samlor Chi. You will not get this in a restaurant, and its not mae in cooking classes. Samlor Chi is a soup with chili paste, garlic, ginger and coconut milk. Then you add fish, eggplant and pumpkin i. We invite guests to make the paste for themself, so they get a better understanding what tools are used and how a traditional Khmer family prepares their meals.

Holistic approach to food experience

Experience means for us a holistic experience. The house we hosts our guests is not just a nice decoration or background for pictures, but it’s home for our guests during their time. Tourists in Siem Reap may know the history of the temples but not the history of the food they make in a cooking class that is different. Just look at Beef Lok Lak, a dish famous with tourists – at yet not a real Khmer dish, but from Vietnam. And although we don’t serve crocodile meat, we do have a host with a crocodile farm (they just breed and sell eggs and babies).

Food experience is a whole experience, from preparing a meal to eating it and talking about it. Why not trying it?

More Khmer food and experiences

Written by André Ruys on 06/18/2019. Posted in Khmer food.

It took us about a month of hard work with our friends at Angkor Design, but finally we are here: Our new website about popular Khmer food, great hosts and Cambodian culture is online. What’s new?

We will focus more on the experience guests can get when visit a host. Dine With The Locals gives travelers a full experience of life in Cambodia, cooking in Cambodia and learn about the daily life in Cambodia. That’s why added the experience section: Each host offers something special beside the Khmer food and we will get deeper into in this part of the website. More experiences in Cambodia coming soon.

We also give you a faster and easier way to jump right to the city where you are (or plan to go). So far we are in Battambang, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Beantey Meanchey. But we are working hard to get hosts in Kampot and Mondulkiri next.

Search for Khmer food and Cambodian culture

We now have a search, in case you are interested in s special kind of meal or Khmer food. Just type in what you are looking for. If you cannot find what you are looking for we will get a message and will improve this in the near future.

Another big change is the booking interface. We are partner with Bokun now, a booking engine recently bought by Tripadvisor. It gives us more exposure to international markets and also state-of-the-art technology and interfaces. We also have instant booking now, so we can confirm a booking for Khmer food and experience immediately. There is still s small chance that our host is for unforeseeable reasons unavailable. In this case we will get in touch with you and offer an alternative.

We hope you like our new design. If you find something that’s not working, please let us know. We appreciate any feedback and suggestions, how we can improve. Finally a special thank to Andy from Angkor Design and our Chief Technology Consultant Sinal from Bayonia. Both did great job to get the new design up and running.

Experience local life in Cambodia

Written by André Ruys on 06/11/2019. Posted in Experience Cambodia, Khmer food, local life.

One of the most recent trends in the travel industry are authentic experiences. While overtourism let travelers reconsider to go to the hotspots in a country, they may change to lesser known, but more individual destinations like experience local life in Cambodia when you visit families. The travelmarket report recently wrote: “More and more travelers are demanding an “authentic” travel experience, a trend that experts say plays into the hands of experienced, high-touch travel agents who can help consumers sift through the vast array of opportunities the world offers. According to a recent Expedia survey, 76% of baby boomers rate experiencing authentic local culture as “the most important” aspect of their decision making, while 62% of Generation X consumers rate local culture most important.”

If you are looking for authentic experiences, you may have to look very close. Nowadays many classic tour packages are just wrapped in new paper. Village tours and cooking classes, food tours and home stays are all a kind of authentic and locals experience. But the are also organized, and quite often there is not much time to interact with locals. Also, interpreters and tour guides may help to communicate, but can be a barrier as well. We are a cooking class with families.

Time needed to experience local life in Cambodia

At Dine With The Locals we do not provide guided tours. We let you have the full experience with the host family, without interference. Our hosts are not working in the tourism industry, their houses are private and not open to the public. Also, the tour itself is private: It’s just you, the people traveling with you and a Khmer family. If you are curious enough, you will get a much deeper understanding of the daily life, the dreams and challenges of locals in Cambodia. Dine With The Locals means that you cook with locals, eat with locals and experience local life in Cambodia.

Rice harvest at the organic farm in Battambang

You can stay one or two hours, and even longer if the hosts have time. We had guests staying for 4 hours with our host Vannak Khun in Phnom Penh and talking about modern art. We had even requests if guests can stay overnight at our host in Banteay Meanchey, because it was so beautiful there (we do not provide accommodation yet).

So much to learn from locals

One great example of local life is the use of the mortar. In Khmer its called tabal, and we use it as well in the official name of our company tabalr technologies Co. Ltd. It is one of the most common tools used in Khmer cuisine. In former times, it was the only way to blend spices and other ingredients. But even now, in the age of electricity, most Khmer will use the mortar instead of the blender. The latter is mostly used to make fruit shakes. When you make the Kroeung spice paste with your hands, crashing the lemongras and tumeric until it becomes a thick paste, you understand what local life is.

Where to eat in Cambodia

Written by ronald on 05/27/2019. Posted in eat in Siem Reap, Experience Cambodia, Uncategorized.

Travelers in Cambodia will get tons of advise of where to eat in Siem Reap or other cities, from fine dining to street food stalls. And yes, the Cambodian cuisine is underrated, Khmer food has way more variety then just Beef Lok Lak and Fish Amok. So, where to eat in Siem Reap and other famous tourist ad travelers spots in the Kingdom of Wonder?

Street food in Siem Reap

Fried scorpions at street food stall in Siem Reap

While street food in Thailand is on everyone’s bucket list, the stalls selling food in Cambodia aren’t so well known. But they are worth a try, not just with our hosts at Dine With The Locals. When you want to know where to eat in Cambodia, Siem Reap is a good start. The best street food in Siem Reap is available at Road 60, right opposite the Angkor Wat Ticket counter. It opens around 5pm, and is still a popular place with locals. While the left lane is usually reserved for shops selling shirts and household items, the right lane has food stalls left and right. Food in Siem Reap at street stalls means you select food at the BBQ or front display ad then sit down in the back on a small table or mat. The owner will heat your food up again on the grill and then serve you at the table. Soft drinks and beer are available as well.

Eat at an organic farm in Battambang

Khmer food at a local home in Battambang with Dine With The Locals

Why not trying something different? Many travelers coming now to Battambang, and it’s also on our map of where to eat in Cambodia. In Battambang we offer you lunch or dinner at an organic farm with our host Yem Panha. She owns an organic farm and sells the vegetables at the market, but also prepares delicious Khmer food in Battambang for our guests. Here is her menu:

Omelette with vegetableEggs from the farms chicken and organic vegetables from just the backyard
Teuk Trey Pha-em Kind of special Khmer source with mixed fresh vegetables and bacon or fish
Sngor Sup Lahong Papaya soup with pork rip
Fresh fruits from the garden

Where to eat in Cambodia: Phnom Penh

Noodle soup at K.E. cafe in Phnom Penh. Get an idea of the size by comparing the bowl to the cola can.

When in Phnom Penh, the most local experience when it comes to food is having breakfast. The Khmer breakfast is usually a noodle soup, either with white rice noodles or with yellow egg noodles (sometimes called Chinese noodles). If you walk around in the morning hours, you will see a lot of small and crowded restaurants usually on street corners, where people sit in groups, having their noodle soup and a chat as well. Don’t wait until a table is free, it is common to share tables (and improve your language skills). If you want a place that’s a bit more modern, but famous for their large soup bowls, try K.E. cafe (its reviewed by Cambopedia here). It’s a bit out of town on the way to the airport, but we haven’t seen bigger bowls than those