Mekong Korean: Cold Weather Food for the Tropics

Mekong Korean Restaurant
Sothearos Drive
Phnom Penh, Cambodia



Korean restaurants are rife in Phnom Penh, and family restaurant Mekong Korean occupies a convenient location in the very center of the city. Dishing up rustic versions of Korean standards such as bi-bim-bap, tofu stew, stir-fried pork with red pepper and chicken stews, the restaurant has an entirely nondescript interior, few Western customers, and background music trending towards "Christian Celtic Songs Of the 90's." I find it all rather relaxing.



My favorite dish here is definitely the bulgogi stew at $8. It's not really bulgogi - they use ground beef here - but I love the slightly sweet, beefy, sesame infused broth. It's served with cabbage, carrots, sesame seeds, onions, and a bunch of enoki mushrooms. All the vegetation can make you pretend you're being healthy. Also a great option when dining with people who are red pepper averse, which is a serious, serious malfunction in Korean restaurants.



Another good dish here is Korean chicken stew, an exceptionally homey dish of braised chicken in a spicy red pepper sauce with potatoes, capsicum, onions, and chilis. It's spicy and delightfuly rustic at the same time. Great over rice, big pieces of skin-on, bone in chicken, something you'd make yourself in cool weather. It's almost getting into the low seventies at night in Phnom Penh now so I feel cold-weather food is entirely justified. It's around $14 for 2, and the stew's serving size was big enough that Giant Iowa Boyfriend and I could share it and be more than satiated.



The reason Korean restaurants may seem somewhat pricier than other restaurants is undoubtedly due to panchan, the ubiquitous selection of side-dishes trotted out at any Korean restaurant worth a damn. As these side-dishes are always refilled upon request (or without request), you could consider a good Korean restaurant something more of an all-you-can-eat buffet—and entree portion sizes tend to be healthy as well.

Mekong Korean does excellent marinated eggplant, fishcakes, beansprouts and daikon, but you'll get something different every time. I find their classic cabbage kimchi only OK, however. Something a little too harsh in the flavor. You'd be surprised how specific kimchi lovers can get. Also, how hard it is for kimchi lovers to get their non-Korean significant others to kiss them after they eat it.

Nak Won Korean Restaurant: Family Korean in The Dark Heart of Phnom Penh

Nak Won Korean Restaurant
Street 222, #40, Corner of Street 63
Phnom Penh, Cambodia



Cambodia happens to have a lot of Korean expats, and all those Korean expats need somewhere to eat - which means Phnom Penh is lousy with Korean eateries. From Korean BBQ places to casual lunch spots to fast-food chains of Korean origin, the city is lousy with Korean foodstuff. As for me? I'm thrilled. My mother lived in Seoul when she was a kid and I grew up eating kimchi - Korean is one of my favorite cuisines of all time. So I was happy to run across the Nak Won Korean Restaurant, conveniently located near my workplace.



Nak Won is a small, quiet, and family run place, set inside what is obviously one of Phnom Penh's trademark expat-homes. There is an English menu but the staff's evident surprise when I ambled in indicates there isn't much barang custom here. No one speaks much English, but the photo menu is helpful. (A few visits and some translation from other patrons has ingratiated me with the staff, mostly because I answered the Ultimate Question of "Why is a white girl devouring that much kimchi?" to their satisfaction).

The lunch menu bears the advantage of being cheap and featuring a pretty healthy variety of dishes. There's pork galbi, stir-fried pork with chili sauce, stir-fried beef, bi-bim-bap, kimchi stew, beef soup, Korean pancakes (pajun), Korean "sushi" (gimbap), galbi stew, grilled fish, and a number of large multiple-person dishes. And as you may perhaps be able to tell by the photo above, the banchan (side dishes) are just plain fantastic - and re-fillable. Meals also come with a tasty soy-bean-pumpkin-chili-onion soup I find rather addictive, and watermelon for dessert.

It's definitely the tastiest kimchi I've had in town. Further, they mix it up considerably, which is important for a Korean restaurant's banchan options. (For the die-hards - yes, they've got purple rice. The real deal).




They do a fine turn with the grilled meats here. This is grilled chicken in a typical slightly sweet Korean marinade ($7). Dark meat (the good stuff) and served with lettuce and Korean bean paste to wrap it all up in. A good light lunch. One interesting thing about Korean food is that I stuff myself silly whenever I eat it, but it's inherently reasonably light - well, okay, until you get to the galbi....



They also do a very fine turn with pork galbi. A huge serve at $7 bucks and juicy, delicious, and on-the-bone. I couldn't finish it and was regarded with some concern by the male half of the husband-wife pair that run the place. I resorted to extremely positive hand-gestures. Yum.



I befriended two Korean brothers on my last visit, who spoke English and were amused enough by my enthusiasm for kimchi to get a conversation started. I was quickly gifted some chilled soju, taught some rudimentary Korean phrases and etiquette, we exchanged business cards, and then they gave me a bowl of the excellent spicy chicken stew they'd ordered - a massive, $25 dollar serve that's suitable for three or more. One of the guys ended up †hrowing the leftover purple rice and panchan in with the dredges of the stew, putting the heat back on, and making a helluva tasty impromptu bibimbap. Clever!

Pine Tree House: Korean Food, Pork Belly N' Oysters, Angler Fish Optional

Pine Tree House
9205-D Folsom Blvd
Sacramento, CA 95826
(916) 366-3323

Sacramento's Folsom Boulevard is our Korean food gulch, boasting a number of tofu-soup joints, Korean grocery-video store-lotto ticket emporiums, and the mysteriously titled "Chicken and Pizza Love-Letter" shack. Among all this is the Pine Tree House, a Korean restaurant considerably more upscale - and tasty - then the exterior might suggest. Turns out the owner of the Pine Tree is the brother of the man who owns Arigato on Howe. We discovered this because he recognized us from Arigato (land of the temptingly bargain-basement priced half off sushi roll) and thanked us personally for patronizing his place. He's a nice guy.

The menu is extensive and has some dishes beyond the usual bi-bim-bap and bulgogi selections, including an interesting seafood selection - angler fish was on the menu last time I stopped in. Prices are high for what most Californians have come to expect from Korean food in the wilds of suburbia, but portions here are somewhat monolithic and ingredients quality is high. Regardless: don't come in here expecting the bargain of the century.




The Pine Tree house offers a truly impressive assortment of banchan, brought out on a special cart and replinished if you ask nicely. All the usual suspects are on offer (read: copious amounts of kimchi), and other treats include a savory egg custard, a Korean style potato soup, and a romaine salad jazzed up with an absolutely delicious sweet red-bean and chili dressing. The only thing missing were those odiferous and delightful dried fish, the stinky little bastards I recall horking down in my youth as I marveled at their little sugar glazed eyeballs - why don't restaurants around here offer them up with the banchan plate? Is it because I am whiter then the Stay-Puft marshmallow man? Is that it? Sometimes I buy them from the Korean grocery store and merrily eat them in front of the TV. I brought them to a class once and well, never repeated that particular experiment again, since I had to spend the day with tiny little fish spines caught in my teeth and breath that could actually summon housecats from the air itself.


Pork belly BoSsaam with napa lettuce and oysters

Pork belly is all the rage right now, but the Koreans have been slinging the stuff for generations, and in high style to boot. This dish, needless to say, is Weird. Whoever first thought of combining pork belly, spicy slaw, oysters, and cabbage must have had a hell of a empty refrigarator (or larder, or whatever Koreans used back in the day in their hill-side shacks). The result is in my opinion curiously delicious, but your mileage may very well vary. Certainly the combo of fatty five-spice flavored pork-belly (boiled) wrapped up with spicy slaw and cabbage, punctuated with the occasional mildly shocking flavor of a nicely sized raw oyster is a different taste sensation from the usual. Goes well with beer, of course. Korean restauants may actually just be a means via which proprietors sell lots of O.B. More research is needed.


Korean soft tofu soup with seafood (Soondubuchigae)

Korean soft-tofu soup is one of the cuisine's standbys, and I always love to get it. The combination of soft and creamy tofu with seafood and spicy red chili broth is a near perfect one, and produces a rich and delightfully slippery textural experience. This is superior winter food, but I'll take it any time of the year. Pine Tree House also offers Korean beef soups, as well as gigantic seafood stews that can feed three or four eaters. The big soups include sea-squirts. I wish there was a sea squirt in the smaller version. There are few more amusing things to have at the dinner table then a sea squirt, let me tell you. The restaurant's version could stand to be a little spicier. Ask them to bring out some spice-enhancing agents if you're like me.


Stir-fried squid with hot bean paste (Ohjinguh bokkeum)

Stir fried squid is real Korean drankin' food, and this was defnitely the best rendition of the classic I've had in Sacramento. A good combination of not overcooked squid bits, green onions, and a spicy and slightly sweet sauce made this a truly addictive dish. Of course it's not good for you, but again, we are discussing Devices That Makes You Want to Drink Beer. This is not the point.

The Pine Tree's wood interior is scrupulously clean. Korean reality TV series and news shows play on the interior flat-screen TVs - the last time I came in I was transfixed over my kimchi by a period style soap opera featuring a bunch of Koreans in traditional dress shouting at each other in a stand of perfect, swaying, pine trees. Last time featured remarkably gender ambiguous youths shaking their groove-thang in the most sparkly fashion imaginable. You won't be bored!

The Pine Tree House is definitely my new favorite place in town for Korean food other then grill-it-yerself BBQ. The combination of high quality, interesting menu choices, non-snarly staff and a nice dining room make it a real winner on Folsom Boulevard. Now go out and order the angler fish and tell me all about it.

Food Frippery

photo via the NYTimes.com

Many Summer Internships Going Organic - NYTimes

Kidlets from nice schools are streaming onto organic farms to complete internships in decidely non literary topics - milking cows and rolling cheeses, anyone? The cynic in me finds the prospect of a bunch of Renaissance Literature majors mucking out pig pens to be vastly amusing ("Omigod but it's so dirty!), but the idealist, nice person that lurks somewhere within my soul thinks it's a rather charming trend. I suppose a natural reaction to both the preponderance of technology and economic upheaval is getting back to nature - and liberal arts majors who've read a little too much Romantic poetry are especially prone to acting on their agricultural impulses. I just pity the rough n' ready farmer who has to root an Arabic romantic poetry specialist out of bed at four in the morning. As for me - the archetypical soft and squishy liberal arts major - I can't say I'm lining up to work in the burgeoning field of sheep herding myself. I'll probably regret it very much when the apocalypse comes.

A Leader Looking for a Following - SacBee

The Boon Boon Cafe in Sacramento gets another great review. Has anyone made it out there of late? I've really got to put it on my list. Thai fusion sounds like a lot of fun in my book. I also intend to get to Udupi Cafe for some chaat in the near future.

In regards to Senor Blair Anthony Robertson, who seems to get reamed out fairly regularly on the Bee's always-entertaining comments page: I like the guy. He's a good writer, he's interesting, and although he isn't the wine expert Mike Dunne was, he brings a good voice to the page. Although he does tend to drool on the knee of restaurants he *likes* to an extent I find kinda embarrassing, he can take apart *crappy* restaurants with charming wit and verve. I think we should let him live.

Burgers from Lotteria, South Korea's McDonalds - A Hamburger Today

Robyn Lee of Hamburger Today reviews South Korean's McDonalds equivalant. Those rice bun burgers look totally odd but delicious. As for the squid burger: hell yeah, I'd go there. The bulgogi burger? Beats me why that ain't already on the menu at our Hawaiian BBQ joints. I think someone who is more industrious then I shall ever be should construct a website functioning as a database of world fast food places. I'll try to take a bunch of photos in Spain and Italy. (Italy has GOOD fast food).

Drinking Age in Different Countries - Cognac.com

Ever wonder about the drinking age in Paraguay? Cognac.com has got your back. (It's 20, in case you were curious). America, along with Indonesia and Palau, has the oldest age at 21. Good company to be in, I guess. Of course, you could be in Libya, Sudan, or Iran (among others) where alochol is completely illegal, so perhaps we should stop complaining.