This morning, I decided to try getting breakfast from one of the street vendors, the ones who push their carts down the street ringing bells to entice people to buy whatever type of food or snack they’re selling. Yesterday, I bought some fruit from one where they picked out a few pieces of tropical fruit, sliced them up, sprinkled a little sugar on them, and threw them in a little plastic bag with a toothpick. I’ve also seen carts with hot dog-like shaped meat coming in too wide a range of colors. This morning, the cart that happened to come by when I stepped outside had sub rolls lined up on top, and I saw him scooping something into them for someone else who had stopped him earlier. Since I don’t speak Khmai yet and still don’t know what the typical foods are from a lot of places, I’m somewhat at the mercy of chance. Anyway, I decided to try it, whatever this puree-looking, spread-like thing was that he was putting on these rolls. As he was scooping my soon to be breakfast, I was trying to figure out exactly what it was. Then, I noticed, as he was sprinkling chopped nuts on top, that whatever it was was starting to melt. I soon realized that I had in my hands the most literal ice cream sandwich I have ever had: lots of little scoops of ice cream sitting in the middle of a white bread hero roll. All that kept going through my head was Jonah declaring sophomore year, “I’m in college. I can do whatever I want,” referring to the fact that no one could stop him from having a scoop of ice cream from our fridge before brunch one weekend.
While I’m writing about food anyway, I can say that real gado-gado from an Indonesian restaurant does not actually taste anything like the kind we make on OA. Somehow, I guess the recipe didn’t quite translate to the whisper light stove and the Nalgene cooking tools in the woods. In general, there’s a huge variety of food available here from all over Asia, as well as a few really cool “upscale” hide-aways - lots of backyard courtyards and thatched roofed restaurants nestled into blocks that you would never otherwise guess had them. Elsewhere, for example, is a huge white colonial villa with wide verandas tucked behind a high outer wall but nestled among lush foliage and next to a pool. The Shop has a counter full of sticky buns on a block of otherwise non-descript buildings. Nature and Sea is a third floor climb up the narrow outside stairs of an apartment building, which takes you up to a thatched rooftop eating area with wooden tables and cushioned benches that overlook Independence Monument and the nearby temple and neighborhood. Then there’s the FCC, the institution on the waterfront that long served as a meeting place for expats in the city and which is now written up in every single travel book about Cambodia. Although I’ve already developed the local expat snobbery of thinking I’m too cool to go there regularly, it’s a wonderful colonnaded third floor restaurant and bar that overlooks the riverfront and has just the right number of slow turning wooden fans and sepia toned pictures to make it feel as though you are someplace special.
Everywhere, you can get great fresh juice and, more commonly, fruit shakes with fresh banana, coconut, mango, papaya, orange, lemon, or any other tropical fruit you can think of. I’ve discovered two things about juice here. The fresh juice is excellent, and the bottled “juice” that you buy at corner shops is awful. All local Khmai restaurants serve warm tea in the morning and cold tea for the rest of the day included with the meal. On a day when I wasn’t really in the mood for tea, I decided to try one of the canned juices they had. The winter melon juice tastes like liquefied animal crackers. Not that I don’t like animal crackers, but I prefer not to drink them. And I’ve had no better success with any of the additional three canned types of canned juices that seem to be sold in the city.