September 10, 2007

Asia | Cambodia | Phnom Penh

A Tour Through Khmer Cuisine

By Nicole Cotroneo

Wild Frontiers can show you the joys of Cambodian cooking — they'll even hold the fried spiders.

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Sure, fried spiders may be a “national delicacy,” but Cambodia’s cuisine has much more to offer than bug fritters. That’s what Wild Frontiers’ new culinary tour will set out to prove, October 13-27, when intrepid eaters travel from Siem Reap to the capital city, Phnom Penh, under the guidance of Stephane Delourme, head chef for English seafood guru Rick Stein. Three decades after the fall of the communist Khmer Rouge — a murderous regime that starved its people — the nation’s liberally-spiced Khmer cuisine is enjoying a renaissance. You’ll track ingredients from market stalls and fishermen’s nets to some of the finest restaurants in the country, including Anise Terrace, at one of the newest boutique hotels in the capital. You’ll also dine at the ultra chic Foreign Correspondents’ Club housed in a French-colonial governor’s mansion just a stone’s throw from Angkor’s World-Heritage temples. Eventually, though, they’ll be a pause to your passive hedonism and you’ll have to work for what you eat: At the Cambodia Cooking School you’ll engage in interactive classes, learning to make Khmer specialties — minus the spiders, if you’re lucky.