Stomachs on legs are proud to present

Sorry for bad quality pictures... it was very dark and my camera sucked.

Brown rice & veggie nigiri:


Also, tofu quiche.


Both from Gaya-Aoyama, Tokyo.

I've been there in good old days when they were still a regular (i.e., not claiming "organic") izakaya.

It was a pleasant surprise when they turned into a healthy beige food capital.

They actually have both strictly macrobiotic veggie and non-veggie menus, so it's actually quite handy. A good variety of shochu and sake too.

You can also smile at the Japangrish introduction:

Since The GAYA restaurant originated in Yoyogi-uehara in Jun.28 1987,we've been struggling for our wishes that all guests get full of vitality and more healthy day and night．We've been branching out having hope to offer Delicious cuisine,Good drink, and Pleasant talk.

What is the TRUE TASTY?
What is real necessary for vitality of guests?

Since mad cow disease problem occured,we've thought of safety of food seriously and considered what our restaurant should be like.In truth,we had made an effort to purchase ingredients as low price as possible and hardly thought about the environment in which vegetables and meat grew.We started to concidered the importance of food deeply and we must change the stance of our restaurant.

We resolved to try opening up ORGANIC IZAKAYA!!

“All dishes the guests have build their bodies．”We'll always keep this in our mind and decided all ingredients and seasonings are natural. We call this “REAL FOOD".
Please have dishes,drink happily and laugh heartily．
Both a healthy mind and healthy body are true vitality．All of us try as hard as possible to help all guests with their vitality from now on.

My favorite line... What is the TRUE TASTY?

Fuji is a Thai-owned chain restaurant serving Japanese food in Thailand.

It's supposed to be the archetype of the Japanese food as Thais like it.

I had a grilled mackerel set meal sometime last year, and it left me with no impression, so I didn't go back,,,, until recently.

In between my trips to the mountains recently, I just had one night stay in the city.

After rushing through running errands, I ended up in a shopping mall, and it was a dinner time. I was too tired to be creative. So, I just went into Fuji and ordered a tendon set and hot green tea.

It was, actually, pretty good.


Nicely trimmed shrimp tails, not so instant-tasting miso soup with enoki mushrooms and tofu, no sugar in green tea, and nice onion tempura.

But of course, I had been eating the country Thai food for a week right before I went to Fuji, so it might have factored in that my pickiness for Japanese food was very low, in favor of Fuji.

One funky thing was it came with kimchi, which is spicy Korean pickle, not Japanese style tsukemono. I guess ready-made kimchi in jars are much easier than maintaining Japanese nukazuke, which is a particular pickle usually accompanies tempura in Japan. That's okay, ready-made kimchi is probably much better than bad nukazuke. Fast-fermented fake tuskemono's are one of those things not worthy of eating.

Another funkiness: travel thermo mug used as a hot green tea server.

Of course those mugs are not made to pour the content out, so you make a little mess on the table. I like it that it keeps the tea warm though.


With the upgraded impression of Fuji, I went there again at a later date.

This time, I ordered a Fuji bento set with tempura and chawan-mushi.

Not as good as tendon. I think it was too meaty overall for me.

Good: shrimp tempura, grated daikon raddish in tempura dipping sauce (important details), ginkgo nuts in chawan-mushi, inari-zushi, ito-konnyaku, enoki mushroom and tofu miso soup.

Not so good: imitation fake crab in sushi rolls (why can't they just use cucumbers if the cost is the issue?), bread crumb fried mackerel, cold chicken teriyaki, salmon tempura, Thai-style overly sweet "salad cream", artificially colored kamaboko in chawan-mushi.

Thai style: takoyaki was an odd addition to bento... it's like squeezing in a mini hot dog into a dinner plate.


They have a New Year gift promotion which goes: "this coming year of oxen, we are presenting the Neko (cat) set," for those spending more than 1,000 baht until January 5.

Yes it's kind of cute...and Akemashite Omedetou (A Happy New Year, in Japanese) is spelt correct... but... why a Neko set for a year of oxen??

It might make my hobby to go to Fuji from time to time to find a little oddness here and there.

Have a Happy New Year of oxen, 2009!

Once, coffee in Thailand often meant Nescafé's, and still does in most of the countryside.

But in the past few years, modern cafés are mushrooming in the city of Chiang Mai, especially around Nimanhamin Road, near Chiang Mai University.

They actually seem to have a lot of branches in Bangkok and even have outlets in Phuket and Pattaya, but in Chiang Mai iberry is one of the newest cafés in the city.

They have a huge yellow dog... and a big Mao Zedong-looking sculpture in their front yard:

The huge yellow dog actually has a human face:

I had a scoop of nutella ice cream (49 baht):
They also have free wireless internet. And nice sofas. Great.

There is also a funny-faced friendly dog:
Is it a French bulldog? or some mix of Boston terrier and bull dog?

Although I still like to support the Chiang Mai local Wawee Coffee (be careful, the website has sounds) for their yummier coffee drinks (for me) and Doi Chang Coffee for their good cause, iberry is a good place to get nice ice cream, alright lattés, and free wireless internet.

So, before the Olympics ends, I thought I'd slide in a more than predictable restaurant recommendation for Beijing, to add to your Steingarten recommendations

It was nearly five years ago that I was in Beijing (on my honeymoon after being married in Yokohama with Kjam in attendance), but the memory of this meal still lingers

After a tough day climbing, around 36 turrets of the great wall.....(things to do before you die: climb great wall - tick) we managed to drag our sorry tired legs out for the evening and headed to South Beauty inside the World Trade Centre for dinner

South Beauty is an upmarket chain restaurant serving Sichuan food. And though I've never been to Sichuan and cannot therefore attest to its "authenticity", it was by my humble standards, a damn good meal.

We ordered the selection of cold appetisers, the spicy crab, the south beauty tofu and the Number One South Beauty Dish

The appetisers and crab were good, but not mind blowing.



The tofu, on the other hand, was amazing. A chef appeared at our table and made fresh tofu, then a waitress doled it into little bowls and added savoury toppings. It was warm and creamy, and although memory fails me as to what exactly the toppings were I remember they were salty and sharp and balanced with the tofu perfectly.







The number one dish emerged as a bowl of seasoned oil into which a piping hot mineral stone is placed

This sends hot oil spitting all over the place....which is where the table cloth comes in handy



Then thinly sliced veal is added and cooked briefly, fished out once the oil splatter dies down. Yes it is oily, but not in an over bearing way and when eaten with the tofu, balanced things out well again.



although there are many places on my "to go and eat list" in the world, Beijing eats are hard to beat in my book.

PORTLAND, Ore. — A New York man who pleaded guilty to murder in Oregon in exchange for buckets of fried chicken will get calzones and pizza to go with his life sentence.

Tremayne Durham, 33, of New York City, admitted last month that he fatally shot Adam Calbreath, 39, of Gresham, in June 2006. Durham wanted to sell ice cream and ordered an $18,000 truck from an Oregon company. He later changed his mind, but the company wouldn't provide a refund.

The would-be ice cream man came to Oregon and killed Calbreath, a former employee of the company, while looking for its owner, authorities said.

Durham agreed to plead guilty to murder _ but only if he could get a break from jail food. The judge agreed and granted Durham a feast of KFC chicken, Popeye's chicken, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, carrot cake and ice cream.

After Wednesday's sentencing, Durham was to get the rest of the deal _ calzones, lasagna, pizza and ice cream, his defense attorney confirmed. They will pay the tab.

Durham also got married Wednesday in a civil ceremony at the Portland courthouse. The wedding to Vanessa Davis, 48, also of New York City, was not part of the plea deal that will give Durham a chance for parole after 30 years.

Deputy District Attorney Josh Lamborn said Multnomah County Judge Eric Bergstrom made the right call in allowing the unusual plea agreement because it saved the expense of a trial and possible appeals.

link

Thai's love branding and packaging more than most I've decided... and Vanilla Industries hits the brand loving spot. Vanilla Industries is the brainchild of the children of mega food conglomerate, S&P. S&P make pretty bad and pretty low grade bakery items for the large scale Thai market. Their children make marginally better bistro food at higher prices and better packaging.

First came the bistro and creperie...now comes dim sum and "japanese cafe" (whatever that is supposed to be)

On Ekkamai soi 12, in one of the many very cool old 1970s era houses that dominate the tree lined back sois of Sukhumvit is Vanilla Royal and Vanilla Garden.




Vanilla Royal is a dim sum...fairly bad, gluggy dim sum....edible mind you. The decor is, staff uniforms and overall presentation is, as to be expected great. So people come and they eat. Note the mercedes and bmw's in the car park. It's not that pricy by western standards but very pricy by Thai standards so its strictly high so in there.




Further down the garden path you can wash down your gluggy dim sum and fishy prawn flavour down with some decent coffee...or choose from their Western-inspired Japanese food at their Japanese Cafe...and try to remember you're in Thailand...





We went back for a second try, after the dim sum to try the cafe. Hock had the katsu pork bun, not quite what he had in mind, but tasty apparently


I had a somewhat comforting prawn and avocado sandwich drowned with seafood mayo wedged on pillowy soft white bread



It wasn't terrible but it was far from memorable.....I like a good garden, especially in Bangkok but there really is little reason food wise to visit this place

Update: well maybe I was wrong....we went back there again and had a coffee and sandwiches. The coffee is decent and the sandwiches were sandwiches of my childhood. Egg and mayo on crustless white bread and ham cheese and mushroom toasted on crustless white bread. Terribly trashy by western standards but decidedly Japanese and hi society by Thai ones. There is something strangely comforting about a well made egg sandwich that takes me and Hock back to our 1970s childhoods, vegemite and cheese sandwiches, cheese and Piccadilly sandwiches, vegemite and chip sandwiches, ham and cheese sandwiches, those strange salad rolls that always had grated carrot in them, lamingtons and custard pies....they probably just need to put asparagus rolls and some curried egg on the menu and it could quite easily be renamed the New Zealand Edmond's Cookbook Cafe. But then probably no one would go

Does the above picture turn you on?

Healthy food seems to have a bad rap amongst serious eaters. The best restaurants are geared towards decadance and escapism; the most popular cookbooks tend to revolve around 'comfort food' presented with 'honest' English wit and oodles of butter and pastry. We like to eat fatty food in front of a fire, like, yeah, but what's so clever or new about that?

If it isn't trying to imitate full-fat/refined-carb dishes (I did recently try to make a wholegrain Roman-style carbonara - it wasn't good), food that is created with thoughts of health and environmental impact in mind can also be beautiful to look at and delicious.

Although my tastes were developed through working in cafes and restaurants as a teenager (delicious versions of classic kiwi tucker at Eva Dixon's Cafe, Italian food at Mondo Cucina, and then several different Japanese restaurants), my first ever cookbook was from the Moosewood restaurant series, so I guess I was indoctrinated early. Some of their dishes remain among my favourites, like black eyed peas sauted with garlic and balsamic and spinach. There is something very rewarding about triumphing over the nastier excesses of industrial food production, about choosing to vary your diet with meals based around non-meat protein sources, about working with unrefined grains: it makes you feel closer to the earth and less wasteful since you are eating more of the plant. And healthy food is, like, healthier for you ay.

Really good healthy cuisine (not sure what else to call it) - which shouldn't always be but tends to be vegan or vegetarian - makes simple flavourings like lemon and ginger do olympic feats of taste. It makes vegetables seem like precious and delightful creations (no small feat in itself) and it often involves a bit more preparation and marination. I guess that sense of care and connection to the kitchen and to the produce is what the slow-food movement is trying to trademark.

It's easy to write it off as a need to feel virtuous through food choices, but I actually think, in the same way that following a traditional Japanese recipe can bring a tactile and aesthetic enjoyment - and a sort of spiritual connection to the tradition of that meal - so too can the deployment of healthy recipes in a tradition going back to those early Californian hippies. Is it really a bad thing to get more of a buzz from making zucchini-date-honey muffins than from baking a sticky steamed pudding with flour rubbed in suet, where the buzz is derived from its being 'so English' and the taste so rich and decadent?

I would rather be pseudo-virtuous than an outright glutton.

And in the end, I'm left wondering, why do I feel like I have to justify myself for wanting to eat delicious food that's actually good for me? Why is being healthy so uncool?

I was very happy the other day when a box of books arrived which we posted back from Toronto. It contained two different editions of the signature cookbook of a Toronto chain of salad/juice/ rice-bowl restaurants named Fresh by Juice for Life.

The three branches of this restaurant are quite a phenomenon. The newer edition of the cookbook bears a recommendation on the cover from Jeffrey Steingarten-approved Toronto chef Susur Lee (something twee along the lines of "Feeds the mind body and soul. It's the future."). And, rather like the celebrity-named sandwiches at your local deli, Susur created a signature juice there. Something to do with beets and raspberries.

Like so many good spots in Toronto, it is done out in an easy-to-wash, pleasant but generic cafe style with plastic washable cups that doesn't exactly scream serious restaurant, and being voted Best Vegetarian Restaurant in Toronto numerous times wouldn't necessarily seem like a huge recommendation either. But along with the plastic cups they have smart wait staff and table service, and it's quite fascinating to see all three branches of a place that goes beyond basic fare like juices and vege burgers, to spicy Sri Lankan noodles and Peruvian-maca/sprouted-flax/hemp-seed shakes, so packed every single day, not just with yoga mums but suits and the occasional group of indie rock teens.

I guess the key factors in the success of Fresh are: the food really gets your taste buds tingling, it's stomach filling, and it's pretty affordable. And presented nicely, too.

The way the cookbook is written doesn't do much to mitigate the cliched image of vegetarians as narcissistic health-freaks: why does every such cookbook have a thousand photos of the chef in question grinning in an unnerving manner as if to say "read my healthiness in the glow of my teeth....aren't I puuuuuuurrty"? (I'm reminded of a raw food cookbook I once saw which had photos of this long-haired blonde guy jumping around in the surf)

And neurotic sounding paragraphs like this are rather amusing/unnerving, too:

"Whereas in the first book I managed to maintain healthy eating habits through the entire writing process, this time I munched on potato chips, sweets and chocolate soy ice cream and drank gallons of ginger ale and hot chocolate...I did however manage to resist the temptation to fuel my writing with caffeine for fear of causing irreparable harm to my marriage!"
Like, wow!

However I must say that every single recipe in the two Fresh cookbooks have been a complete success so far, from a mango-tofu-peanut salad to a spicy citrus-infused Cuban chickpea soup. Our recent purchase of a nice Kitchen Aid blender allows us to replicate some of Fresh's great smoothies, like a coconut-chai thing and a warm date & oat infusion which really does have the promised calming effect.

And somewhat endearingly, there is a dish called Wrapper's Delight,
"named after Jennifer's favourite song from the 1970s", and a drink named after Iron Maiden.

The best thing about books like these is how dramatically you increase your salad repertoire, but the recipes for sweet potato pie, dosas and strawberry-lavendar muffins don't go astray either.

Here's an excellent light, creamy, garlicky dressing that's best served with salad leaves, roasted vegetables and a scoop of hummus.

CREAMY SUNFLOWER DRESSING
from ReFresh by Ruth Tal & Jennifer Hudson

2/3 cup raw sunflower seeds
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/3 cup grapefruit juice
3 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 cup filtered water

Combine ingredients in a blender or food processor. Process until thick, frothy and smooth.
(This dressing should be good for 4 - 6 salads, and keeps well in the fridge for 4 or 5 days)

I really wish there was a branch of Fresh in Cologne. Right next door to the gourmet burger joint and yakitori bar which don't exist either. Once again, thank god for recipe books.

PS: the spinach in the picture below looks wilted because it was briefly blanched in hot water. Yessir.

Krispy Kreme's at the airport!

We did really well on this trip to NYC, all thanks to Village Voice restaurant critic Robert Sietsema. Nary a bad mouthful passed through our gullets. The only sadness was that we couldn't manage to eat two big main meals per day.

A definite highlight was Hill Country Barbecue, located a block west of Madison Square Park, in a block that at night time is dark, stark and does not feel that it will offer up any delights. However, it does.

Read Sietsema's admirable review of Hill Country

If you can stand the fact that Hill Country is a loud, brash, almost Disneyland-ish BBQ experience, you will love it. We actually saw a father & son arrive for dinner in ten gallon hats. Hill Country is styled after the beloved Texas Kreuz Market, right down to the bathrooms downstairs which are fitted out to resemble wooden outhouses (within a separate Ladies room of course). There was NFL playing on TV screens, loud music on the sound system, and a gimmicky system whereby you take your order card to the 'stalls' of the barbecue 'market' and when someone shouts to you that you are next in the queue of (mostly white) customers, you shout to the (mostly African American) 'pitmasters' that you would like a quarter pound each of lean brisket and moist brisket with white bread (scrupulously following Sietsema's directive), and they pull out smoky meat from black iron-lidded brick holding bins (the hulking metal Ole Hickory pits, each of which has a smoking capacity of 1000lbs of meat, are visible beyond some glass doors), and plopped onto a twist of butcher paper on a plastic tray. Then you get your sides from the next stall, then you pay at the cashier. If you want to get a table in the pleasant noisy warmth upstairs or at the long communal tables downstairs, where the bands play and where there are happy hours for Jack Daniels, you're best to book. There seem to be some nice music booked there, like The Poor Man's Roses, a Brooklyn-based Patsy Cline tribute band. We were able to get a table on the street right away without a reservation, which was fine for us, though the mix of NYC hubbub and Texas smells inside would be worth booking for. The black-people-serving-white-people thing made me a bit uncomfortable but everybody seemed pretty happy with their jobs and the atmosphere was nothing less than congenial.
The ordering system was quite hectic and we were glad to know ahead what we should choose.

We loved the moist-and-lean brisket eaten together on white bread, so soft, greasy, smoky, floppy-tender and delicous. Unlike any beef experience we'd ever had. The pork ribs were better with a little of the sauce in the bottle at the table.



The corn pudding was indeed wonderful. A savoury sort of souffle with a deep corn flavour and touch of sweetness from the corn with slightly crunchy crust, we agreed with Sietsema that it was the best of the sides – Erik also liked the skillet corn bread though I found it too sweet and tasted somewhat of baking soda. I did also like the sweet potato mash with bourbon.



Looks like baby poo, tastes delicious. I am a maniac about almost anything involving sweet potatoes, though, and most things with a sloppy pureed or mashed consistency. The Cool As A Cucumber salad (ordered as a gesture towards green food) was ok. Beware of ordering too much... it might not seem like much, but a half-pound of meat plus one side is more than enough per person... I wished I'd had room for the peach & blackberry cobbler.

What heaven looks like:





Hill Country
30 West 26th Street
(212) 255-4544

More photos of Hill Country, including the Ole Hickory pits.

Let's be brief shall we....Yuu Yakiniku Restaurant, Bangkok

below are sneaky photos

Told off by waiters for taking photos

Jokes were told about what an original idea yakiniku is....

Waitresses dressed like Bellhops

otherwise just your standard every day yakiniku

with extra chili for Thai people

fresh, beansprout salad is good, so are the eringi mushrooms, not too expensive..except for the shiso leaves

Sukhimvit Soi 31 and Thonglor Soi 13

Few foods inspire absolute devotion in me like hotpot. There's just something about it that appeals to my very core: sitting around a table with a boiling pot in the middle and leisurely dropping in soup ingredients is one of my life's true pleasures. It is interactive, leisurely and social. It doesn't take much to prepare (mainly chopping). It is generally healthy, yet full of flavour. Oh the virtues of hotpot. Below is a review of some of my all time favourite hotpots. All recipes require a hotpot - gas or electric, chopsticks, soup spoons and little bowls at a minimum. Most should be served with rice.

Sukiyaki/ Shabu Shabu
When I was little my Dad occasionally travelled to Japan and when he did he would bring home new and exciting culinary treasures like sukiyaki. Sukiyaki is a strictly beef affair

Recipe
Sliced beef enough for all diners ( approx 100 gms each. Get your butcher to partially freeze and then slice on a slicing machine, must be paper thin. Alternatively you can buy in the frozen section of most Asian supermarkets have presliced beef) thaw and arrange attactively on a plate (I used to make beef roses until one of my guests pointed out that it looked disturbingly similar to a chacha, so maybe not that attractively)
Vegetables and other accompaniments sliced into bite sized pieces
- leek
- spring onion
- onion
- mushrooms (fresh and dried shitake)
- chinese cabbage
- other green pot herb like spinach or whatever
- tofu pieces (fried and soft if you like)
- carrots (optional)
- shirataki noodles or vermicelli noodles or even udon (don't put in until the end because otherwise they suck up all the broth

Soy Broth
- 1/3 shoyu kikoman or other japanese variety
- 2/3 water
- big gulp mirin or sake
- heap of sugar
(add more water as the broth evaporates and becomes salty)

Put broth in hot pot, serve raw ingredients at table and dip......don't burn your mouth.

The "authentic" way of eating it, which I do cause I'm so down wid it, is to serve with a raw egg. Diners stir the raw egg with their chop sticks in little bowls and then dip pieces of cooked meat into the raw egg and eat. It's yummy trust me, I don't ever eat runny eggs but I eat them like this. The piping hot beef kinda cooks the egg and cools it down. Its all gooood

Shabu Shabu

- the same but use a konbu dashi stock instead of soy broth
- add sesame dipping sauce and ponzu dipping sauce (you can buy at the supermarkt pre-made or you can make yourself)

Ponzu Sauce
- generally speaking is japanese soy sauce and ponzu juice (aka citrus)

Sesame Sauce
- tahini or sesame paste 1/2 cup
- rice vinegar (japanese) 2 tablespoons
- soy sauce (japanese) 2 tblsp
- miso paste 1/2 cup
- sugar 1/2 cup dissolved
- garlic powder 1/2 tsp
- sesame oil 1/2 tsp

Mongolian Hot Pot

One of my most memorable meals is of having Mongolian hotpot in Beijing on my honeymoon. I've never made it before but it is like Shabu Shabu, in fact I suspect that Shabu Shabu is the Japanese version of Mongolian hotpot, except monglian hotpot traditionally uses thinly sliced sheep and the broth is simply water, but similar sesame dressing. The highlight of Mongolian hotpot is the little wheat buns they serve with it. If you go to Beijing you must hunt some down. I can't tell you where we found ours because it was the result of random wandering and a chance encounter with a friendly chinese microsoft worker who directed us to the restaurant.





Korean Seafood Hotpot
I've never had this in a restaurant, I've only made it myself from the recipe in Shunju. It's good, it's spicy and seafoody. Think spicy korean boulliabase (I know a french chef who would balk at this suggestion, but that's the french for you)
Use seafood (crabs, prawns, oysters, pipis and cockles, clams, scallops, crayfish if you're feeling extravagant, firm white fish fillets) and the same veges as for sukiyaki, but make this broth:

Broth
- Litre water
- Korean chili bean paste (Kochu Chang) - 2 tablespoons or more to taste
- sesame oil 2 tblspns (virgin if you can get, meaning not roasted first, usually lighter in colour)
- garlic - 1/4 bulb bruised skin on
- dried chili powder preferably korean 1 tsp or so
- shoyu show me soy sauce 1/3 cup

again arrange all raw and cook at the table



Chongqing Spicy Hotpot
A boiling cauldron of evil pain. Anthony Bourdain compares it to a bad girlfriend which you know isn't good for you but you can't help but coming back for more. I had my first in a strange mainland chinese restaurant in melbourne that was wedged between two car yards in north melbourne. From the murky depths of the chili broth strange ingredients would occasionally emerge, pig's blood tofu, was that an ear???? tripe etc...It is hot, evil and good and I have no idea how to make it.

Thai Suki
If we are to keep with girlfirend (or boyfriend) anaolgies then Thai suki -MK
and Coca are to Chongqing spicy hotpot what your first going steady "relationship" is to a street walker of the night. MK and Coco are both hotpot chain stores in Thailand and sell a kind of safe, processed, family oriented hot pot that Thai's go crazy for. It's not that expensive, it's clean, and you can avoid the hot sauce. The former you would possibly take your mother to the later certainly not unless your mother happens to be Sichuan. I can see this analogy isn't getting me far. Anyway the point it that Thai suki is a basic version of the fairly tasteless japanese nabe with the exception of a few funky thai ingredients and a spicy Thai dipping sauce. It's safe and reliable but ultimately unexciting after the first few times. Here is a recipe, you can make most of the ingredients yourself or you can buy most of them including the the suki sauce premade at most asian stores.

Soup Chnnang Dtay
Is an oddity that I discovered at Soup Dragon in Siem Reap, Cambodia and became a regular haunt during my residence there. Only Hock and I were devotees however, none of our friends would take us up on the invites especially our friend Reneau of Abacus who would always screw up his nose in that unique way that only the french can do and pronounce "Ferk, nooo waayyy". He claimed they collected their cooking water off the roof. Cooking at the table was always a hazardous affair, little gas table top burners were used which contained old and rusting gas cans, which they would refill instead of buying new ones. The fact that our hotpot once caught fire at our table never put us off. I didn't care cause it was yummy.

It wasn't however very Khmer. Soup Dragon is Vietnamese owned.

Recipe - details are sketchy

Broth
- similar to Vietnamese beef pho stock (look it up yourself)

Bits and Pieces
- thinly sliced beef and beef balls
- veges entailed basically anything that was regularly available in Cambodia, which during the rainy season isn't very much, namely the ubiqitous oyster mushroom that agrisud taught a whole bunch of farmers in Banteay Meanchey how to grow and is the only locally available mushroom in Siem Reap
- mustard greens
- holy basil and saw tooth corriander
- tofu skin
- fat yellow egg noodles that Hock hates and complained continually that it was like eating fettucini
- egg

Dipping Sauce
was a make at your table with the condiments provided type of affair
- included locally made chili sauce (like siracha )
- tamarind sauce
- pickled bullet chilis
- shredded and dried lemongrass
- pickled garlic