Restaurant BBQ Party: Cambodian BBQ, Live Chickens, Is That a Seagull?

Restaurant BBQ Party
Street 65
Phnom Penh

Cambodian's are big proponents of what I think of as the cook-your-own genre of food. We've got shabu-shabu joints, catch-all "soup" establishments where you cook raw ingredients in a large pot of broth, and, perhaps most characteristically, Cambodian BBQ, or Chhnang Phnom Pleung.

In English, the cooking device is often referred to as a "volcano pot," which does make a certain amount of sense when you look at the thing, which cleverly combines soup and BBQ into one handy location. You're usually given a piece of pork fat to rub over the hot sides of the conical grill, and then grill or boil the raw ingredients at your leisure.

For my friend Jet's birthday, we headed to the neighborhood Cambodian BBQ buffet joint, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. A rather creatively decorated and profoundly orange room houses a wide assortment of raw ingredients and some cooked stuff to go along with, as well as desserts (mm, black grass jelly. No, actually, not mmm. More like a foodstuff out of "Alien." Albeit pretty much tasteless.)

You pick out your raw foodstuffs - I tried not to think about who exactly had been touching the tongs used to handle the raw chicken and pork - and then take them back to your table to grill them. You can also mix up your own dipping sauces from a healthy array of choices. Naturally, they'll ply you with pitchers of cheap Cambodian beer, and will look the other way if you are, say, drinking a lot of birthday whiskey (because we totally were).

This particular Khmer BBQ restaurant features a not-very concealed kitchen, where you can pop your head around the corner and see a rather sweaty teenage boy burning down charcoal for the grills. There are also a couple of caged chickens in the corner of the restaurant. No effort has been made to conceal them.

During our long and progressively more sloshed meal, we occasionally would hear the call of what sounded like an anguished seagull coming from the back of the restaurant. I looked around but couldn't find whatever poor critter was making the sound. (Was that REALLY chicken?)

And none of us got food poisoning! Khmer BBQ is the best.

On another note, these little cockles are a Cambodian favorite, and I've developed a taste for them, after finally getting over my fear of flesh-eating shellfish borne micro-organisms. (Good god, don't even consider googling the photos of THAT. Of course you probably just did. Sorry.) They're usually stir-fried with holy basil and chili, and you often have to pry them open yourself, which takes a little technique. Worth a shot for the brave and gastrointestinally resilient.

Squeal Barbecue: A Pleasant Oasis of Smoked Meat

Squeal Barbecue
8400 Oak Street
New Orleans, LA 70118-2046
(504) 302-7370

Squeal Barbeque on Oak Street is, properly speaking, an outpost. This is because New Orleans is not a barbeque town. This reality mystifies non-Southern tourists who (perhaps influenced by our reputation) consider the South to be a hotbed of delicious smoked meat products, a magical land where ribs and pulled pork are cooked up on just about every corner, by folks possessing a whole lot of local "character". We have much in the way of Local Flavor in New Orleans, perhaps too much, but a profusion of good barbeque? Not so much.

So I was heartened when Squeal opened, doubly so when I saw that they had an honest-to-God smoker going on their front porch. That they had at least obtained the apparatus of good barbeque. This warranted investigation.

Squeal hits the classic barbeque bases on the menu, that's for sure: smoked ribs, pulled pork, chicken, and sausage are all in evidence, as are collards, grits, hush puppies, and french fries. But the kitchen has ambitions somewhat beyond that of the archetypical rural-South BBQ shack, and it shows: specialities like smoked pork cakes with salsa, a riff on shepherds pie with (you guessed it!) pork and pig-topped nachos are all in evidence, as well as some not-totally half assed salads.



My dining companion and I decided to stick with the classics, being purists, or at least somewhat poor. I went for the half smoked chicken with macque choux (a New Orleans sort of sauteed corn) and collard greens ($12.95). Everything gets accompanied by hushpuppies. Verdict? A pretty worthy effort. The chicken was tender and had a good smoky flavor, and avoided the trap of over-cooking or not-smoky enough flavor that chicken tends to fall into. The sauce is a little sweet for my taste and I maintain there was too much of it - admittedly, for the bulk of consumers, there can never be too much sauce. Well, there are always more infidels then true believers, out there. (My father hails from North Carolina and can provide ample evidence of Southern BBQ as being a very real and very intense religion, divided into warring sects, all of these self-same sects possessing doctrine, minor and major deities, stories of sacrifice and redemption, and vicious philosophical schisms. But I digress). The collards, always a concern of mine, were excellent. This is a kitchen that understands the holy union between greens and pork products.



My friend went for the pulled pork and green onion sausage combo ($13.95), with french fries and baked beans. The pulled pork was pretty good, if not great: nice smoky flavor, but a little dry and not possessed of the crispy just slightly burned bits that send good shoulder over the top. Also, too much sauce on top. Such an affliction. The sausage was very tasty - they need to serve these things on rolls outside the Maple Leaf at 2:00 AM, to the drunken hordes. There's money in them there hills. Beans were deemed "all right." French fries were twice fried and embarrassingly delicious. Kudos.

On the whole, Squeal provides entirely reputable barbeque in a town that is a barbeque wasteland - and the convenient location smack dab on Oak Street makes it a swell launching off point for a night spent wandering Uptown. The price-serving size equation is extremely attractive to the poor and carnivorous college student sect, and there's plenty of craft beer on tap to wash things down with. We ate out on the porch on a lovely and slightly limpid summer afternoon and could easily have lingered there for hours. We had a rubber snake on the table we had found in the car, which the waitress thought was real, and we all laughed a bit nervously together, as she brought us an ash-tray. Still, nice, so nice outside. Something about the smell of smoked meat on the horizon, Pall Malls from a brief distance, and gardenias from the garden next door arrests my ability to move. (We can't smell the oil in the air. Yet. Some people I know claim they can, but I think they're lying, it's psychosomatic for now. Maybe it's coming.) Eat at Squeal, is what I'm trying to say.

Lexington Barbeque #1 : Mmm, Pig

Lexington #1 BBQ
10 US Hwy 29-70 South
Lexington, NC 27294
(704) 249-9814



Lexington is one of North Carolina's barbeque meccas, a town whose various and sundry BBQ joints have been operating since 1919. Lexington barbeque is all about slow-cooked pork shoulder, cooked over hickory wood and tended with love and affection by the town's accomplished pitmasters. A "dip" composed of vinegar, ketchup and spices is basted on the pig in lieu of a rub, creating the uniquely flavorful appeal of NC's distinctive BBQ. The finished pork shoulder is served either chopped super-fine, chopped not-so-fine, or sliced. I prefer the version in the middle, served with "outside brown," the crispy and flavorful pork skin still attached. (Some BBQ restaurants in the area make their own fried pork skins which may be ordered as an appetizer or side dish.) Other attributes of Lexington barbeque include tasty, Cheetoh-puff shaped corn hush puppies, "bbq" or "brown" coleslaw, and vinegar-and-spice based sauces (used sparingly and with reluctance by the hardcore).

We went to Lexington #1 BBQ, which is purported to be the best. Area residents seem to be engaged in a constant argument over which Lexington joint reigns supreme: my uncle, for example, swears by nearby Speedy's, whereas my dad is a Lexington #1 partisan. Barbeque is an extremely controversial subject in North Carolina.



Lexington #1 is extremely popular, and the parking lot was packed the day we visited. The restaurant seems to traffic primarily in to-go orders, but we were there to eat in, so we took our places in the swiftly moving line. The dining area is basic but clean, and the wait staff are models of efficiency and professionalism. They've got to be fast.



I chose the chopped pork with outside brown. Lexington #1 serves barbeque in either plates or trays. Plates include meat, cole slaw, french fries, and another side item (I hear the beans are good,) and trays offer simply meat and coleslaw in a handy cardboard holder. Since the tray actually contains more meat then the plate and I am ambivalent to french fries, I chose the tray. The meat was good, if a little tougher then I might have liked - but the pork skin was truly delicious, a thin layer of fat giving way to a crackly, rich exterior layer. I am also wild about Lexington style coleslaw: vinegar and spice is the main player here instead of the gloppy mayo-ridden junk that passes for slaw in most regions of the country. Dee-vine.



The hushpuppies are also a work of art at Lexington #1. Lightly fried corn meal without cloying sweetness, these are an absolute must. They come with pretty much everything at Lexington #1, so you don't need to worry about somehow missing them.

The restaurant offers cobbler and pie for dessert, but I didn't sample those. You pay at the counter and stand in line with your fellow BBQ eaters with your money in hand: it's great fun to watch waitresses dashing food out of the kitchen and the meat choppin' area into the main room. I noticed someone noshing down on a smoked turkey sandwich while I was in line: apparently Lexington #1's smoked turkey is tasty indeed. Have to get a side of it next time. To go with the pork.