Cheap Eats - Phnom Penh: Cambodian cuisine

Walking into an unknown, empty restaurant is unsettling. You never know if you’ve stumbled onto a gem, or if you’re about to discover exactly why it’s empty. That’s how I felt on my first visit to Phnom Penh (4059 Lawrenceville Highway, Tucker; 770-493-3598), a hole-in-the-wall serving Cambodian (or Khmer) and Southeast Asian food.

There are similarities between Thai and Cambodian cuisines, but one difference is the absence of any overwhelming heat in Cambodian dishes. Capsicum fiends, relax; each table has a trio of homemade accoutrements – a ground chili powder, a bright red chili sauce and pickled green chilies. Gingerly wrapped garden spring rolls ($3.75) filled with lettuce, cucumbers, vermicelli noodles and basil start the meal off on a bright note. The dipping sauce, brimming with chopped peanuts, adds a sweet fattiness to the equation. A side of tangy papaya salad complements the sweet marinade on grilled “beef sticks” ($7.50), and the included rice and almost greaseless egg roll make it one filling meal.

Noodles aren’t as successful as the rest of the menu. The mee-ka-tang ($8.25), a wide noodle topped with Chinese broccoli and beef, was nicely flavored with a sweet soy sauce, but ultimately too watery. Battambang noodles ($8.25) – similar to pad Thai – are tasty but “gloppy and lacking complexity,” according to my friend.

The one must-order dish on the menu is the fish amok ($8.95), a piece of crispy fried tilapia smothered in amok – an enchantingly rich, red-curry and coconut-milk sauce with a pitch-perfect piquancy.

As I basked in the glow of a second delicious meal, a sudden sadness came over me. Why was there no one else here? Was it the distance or had people just not heard about it? Hopefully the latter, because family-run gems such as this one – especially those serving underrepresented cuisines – only strengthen our already exceptional ethnic scene.