Kimly: Crab Market Crab Shack, Awesome Fried Shrimp

Kimly Restaurant
Crab Market (if you're in Kep, you can't miss it)
Kep, Cambodia


Kimly is the most popular restaurant in Kep's Crab Market cluster of eateries, attracting a mixture of both Khmer and Western custom. Specializing in fresh seafood, and with a more extensive menu than other Crab Market restaurants, it attracts a cracking business during holidays, and is usually pleasingly quiet during the week. Everything is fresh, of course: you may note this place is built over the ocean.

Kimly is even so successful that they've built a guesthouse near Knai Bang Chatt: haven't been there yet, doubt they put crab-scented air fresheners in the rooms but one never knows.



I like the crab stir-fried with coconut milk the best: Kep's small, sweet, and tasty crabs pre-cracked and given a run through a thick and rather throughly spiced sauce. There's green capsicum and a little onion and green pepper involved as well. Kimly bears the virtue of never overdoing their crabs, rendering them chewy and displeasing.



We also tried the grilled squid with french fries. Simple enough - isn't everyone in the Crab Market selling squid grilled over a charcoal flame? - and pretty good with some beer. I confess that I'm not very keen on squid unless it is deep fried or stuffed with something, but my boyfriend deemed it very good. The fries were just OK, a bit limp, but there's really only so much one can expect.



I went for the stir-fried crabs with Kampot pepper on my next visit. It's a rather similar sauce to that used for the coconut milk crabs, sans coconut milk: plenty of earthy spices, green pepper, and green onion. The standout flavor is of course the fresh crispness of Kampot pepper, which is green, edible, and a nice reminder that pepper doesn't actually generate in little glass table shakers. Kimly's version of crab with Kampot pepper is not subtle - for a subtle approach, I prefer Trei, down the Crab Market row a few establishments or so. But this is good.



The real winner at Kimly may be the deep-fried shrimp with batter (make sure to specify to the waiter that you don't want shrimp fried in *butter*). If you order the medium version, you get a massive platter of fresh, delectable tail on shrimp with a crunchy but not ultra heavy crust. Delicious stuff and made me long for some Carolina-style special sauce to accompany, although the sweet chili and ketchup on offer did the job condiments-wise. People at other tables were staring at these longingly and asking what we ordered. Do it.

Palm Beach Seafood: Giant Ass Crabs And Devouring Them in Singapore

Palm Beach Seafood
One Fullerton Road
Tel: +65 6227 2332
Singapore

I went to Palm Beach Seafood for my first Chili Crab Experience in Singapore last year, had a nice meal, and figured it would be fine for us to go back again. It's one of the chili crab emporiums that gets regularly recommended to out-of-town types willing to pay for the experience, and it's also in an indisputably enviable locale at One Fullerton Place, within post-dinner stroll distance of the Merlion and many, many high-end shopping opportunities. (Like all of Singapore).

Palm Beach is a standard Chinese seafood house and you can tell by the dining room, which has white tile floors, fake foliage-adorned walls, a bunch of large bubbling fish tanks at the back of the room, and is pitched at a very, very high volume. Chinese seafood houses are roughly the same everywhere insofar as I can tell.

The menu has a range of fresh seafood dishes, along with some non-seafaring specialities to even out the menu. The standby is of course crab, and there are a number of different species and sizes on offer, priced by the weight, and with a number of different cooking styles. You can pick your own victim from the tanks. Most people get the Singapore classic chili crab, which is cracked crab stir-fried in a sweet and spicy red sauce, served with bread rolls for sopping purposes.

Palm Beach really does do an epic chili crab, and this supposedly "medium" stone crab was an impressive specimen of the species. It was roughly as big as my head, in fact. Staring down a gigantic crustacean at dinner time is one of my (many) definitions of a good time, and once we were given Palm Beach branded seafood-bibs and some implements of destruction (crab crackers), we were well on our way.

The demise of Pinchy.

I don't really remember much about digging into a good crab, as I tend to enter what is commonly known as a fugue state, but it was tasty, really tasty, and there was a lot of it. I must say that I prefer my family's home-made chili crab to the restaurant stuff - the sauce is too sweet - but this was pretty excellent all the same. They didn't overcook and undercook the crab, which is an occasional complaint. Chili crab is in essence a fairly simple thing, or it should be.

We also tried some very good milk-fried prawns: bursty little beasts fried in hot oil then served with buttery crumbles mixed with fried curry leaves and a touch of garlic. Curry leaves are a favorite of mine, rarely encountered in the West, and they gave the dish an exotic, subtle South Indian flare. I am not sure where the "milk" part comes in, but maybe it has something to do with the buttery crumbles. They were very good, and an interesting departure from the stand-by of salt and pepper shrimp.

We ordered some fried duck to go with the seafood, which was a mistake at a restaurant that specializes in seafood: overcooked and too tough, except for the drumstick, which naturally I got when my parents weren't looking. Skip it. A better side dish is spicy fried morning glory, which was very good the first time I was here, and is a natural, nutrient-rich accompaniment to seafood dishes in Southeast Asia.

Palm Beach does nickle and dime, as many Chinese seafood places do. Being charged extra for a supposedly complimentary plate of prawn crackers and pineapple sambal is a bit tacky: if something is on a table in front of you at most restaurants, it is a tacit agreement that it's free, or at least it is in my book.

The place was chock-full when we arrived and the hostess put us in a rather lame seat right next to the door, which incensed my father since we did arrange through the hotel concierge and called in advance in the morning - and a walk-in group got a nicer table immediately upon arrival.

After some poiteish posturing on the matter (well, polite as posturing about table location gets, I guess), we were put somewhere nicer. If you book far enough in advance, you can also be seated outside with a view over Marina Bay while you do horrible things to innocent sea creatures, which does sound pretty salubrious.

Addendum: I have always wondered why human beings love to gaze wistfully over the sea from whence the creatures they are messily devouring came from. Maybe it makes us feel like we are the brave fisher-people our ancestors hailed from. Maybe gazing over the sea makes us feel like conquerors of what lies beneath, never mind that the vast majority of the under-sea species we eat really aren't much brighter than, well, a lobster. (Exceptions made for octopi and whales. I'm sorry, guys. Real sorry.)

Or, maybe people just really dig a sea-view and like to assume that what they are eating was pulled wriggling and feisty from the very ocean they are looking at, even if in reality, dinner came from somewhere far away and was (if it was lucky) dumped into a holding tank before the inevitable end. This is rarely the case, of course - except in Cambodia, where crabs, fish, and prawns are kept in wicker boxes tied to over-the-water restaurants, and are fished out as need desires. Convenient enough in its way, except for in a typhoon.

Dried Fish I Have Known at O'Russei Market

O'Russei has a dried fish theme. Dried fish with ambient lighting.

O'Russei Market is probably Phnom Penh's largest local market. Unlike the Central and Russian markets, tourists are generally an unknown quantity here and no one's selling souvenirs. The patrons are pretty much all Khmers and the occasional expat in need of some practical junk for the home. That's exactly what Phill and I use it for. It's like Home Depot, Circuit City circa-1997, a really convoluted Asian food market, a stationary store, and a twisted variant on Macy's in one convenient location.

O'Russei is also on the large side.

Like most massive, unruly Asian markets, it's a confusing labyrinth, distinctly scented with durian, dried shrimp, and turpentine, and lots and lots of people shoving you aside while carrying enormous boxes of god-knows-what from stall to stall.

Draperies are useful in many guises in Cambodia, especially for those ceremonies - weddings, funerals, what-have-you - that are often held in the street. O'Russei is your ceremonial regalia emporium of choice.

You might want to consider wearing closed-toe shoes, lest you get your digits smashed by some dude going 10 miles an hour down the aisles with a rusty pushcart full of hacksaws.


Sometimes I think I should just do a photo book called "Dried Fish I Have Known." Of course, who the MARKET for this would be....

You can buy spring rolls and noodles and dumplings and other somewhat mysterious food products from ladies in pajamas squatting in the stairwell, and there's usually someone wandering around with an ice-chest with accompanying massive ice block with beverages inside in case you find yourself in need of electrolytes, and God knows you will.



There's also fruit stands and candy-makers and lots of ladies wandering around with durians, which can be a bit difficult to divert yourself around (they are spiky). It's a good idea to keep your eyes on your feet at all times in this place.


And down the stairs we go.

O'Russei is especially useful because the lack of tourists means prices are reasonable, and if you speak a smattering of Khmer, it's even easier to get things cheap.


My extremely tall boyfriend looking somewhat out of place while negotiating for a backpack. The good news is it is absolutely impossible for me to lose him in a crowd.

Recent finds included a black bag that says GIANT SPIDER: SPIDER SPIDER SPIDER on it (with a picture of a neon tarantula), cardboard photos of the King and Queen of Cambodia that now hang in reverent positions in our home, and a hacksaw for whatever the hell my boyfriend gets up to when I'm not home.



An entire floor of O'Russei is devoted to women's clothing and shoes. So many shoes. A vortex of shoes. Thankfully, mostly in my size. 5 1/2 size feet are finally paying off. Bless ya, Asia.


Cambodian retail tends toward hyper-specialization. As this photo may illustrate.

Also, if you were wondering where Cambodians buy those t-shirts that make no sense whatsoever in English, this is the place. (I really want the shirt that just says PERCENT: % but have resisted the urge.....so far).


More hot wild dried fish action.

Sea Creatures I Have Et in Kampot and Kep

I have this backlog of photos on my computer, staring at me, and they're from the Kep Crab Market. And I wanted to share them with you. They relate to no particular restaurant but do give some impression of Cambodia's pretty remarkable array of edible and (mostly) delicious sea creatures - and what goes into catching them and bringing them to market.



A bit of complicated and death defying Internet Research revealed this strange creature is a Melo miltonis sea snail, also known as the southern bailer or "bailer-volute." It is named "the bailer" because the (de-snailed) shell apparently is extremely handy for bailing out a sinking canoe or small water vessel. Like everything else that draws breath on this planet, Cambodians eat it. How's the taste? A colleague of mine noted, "I thought something that looked that freaky had to be delicious. I WAS WRONG." Noted.



All this dazzling sea-life is brought to the surface by means of rather small and basic boats, which troll the waters near Kep daily and bring the goods back to the market. Crab traps are ubiquitous, and almost all of the seafood sales appear to be conducted by women. Arguments over crab size and quality can get exceptionally heated, and everyone gathers around and begins eyeballing the crustaceans when a trap is brought in from its mooring near the shore.



During the prime-time of day for seafood sales, a number of people will be standing around in the water, waiting to be called in. Kep is tiny and quiet but the seafood market is by far the busiest thing about the place.



This is the standard view from all the Crab Market's restaurants - fishing boats bringing in their nets, and people wading into the shallow water to get the crab-traps out. It is all very bucolic, and only occasionally smelly.



The prawns are gorgeous, of course - wild caught, scrumptious - and kept in large yellow buckets by fearsome looking Ladies of a Certain Age. They do try to convince me to buy a bag or two although I am holding a camera and looking every inch the part of the barang, although half-heartedly, and while laughing. Buying prawns out of buckets reminds me of home, of New Orleans.



The Crab Market's restaurants all seem to feature a grill station of some kind, selling seafood of all kinds on a stick to those who prefer to eat ala-carte, or just prefer to eat things off a stick in general. I prefer to sit down for reasons of air conditioning, but the goods look tasty - and eminently simple.



Cambodia happens to possess an abundance of squid. I hope you like tentacles. I sure do.



And here is the Durian, the most infamous of Southeast Asia's fruits, reputed to taste alternately of paradise, a woman's nether region (a-hem), cheese, something in-between cheese and a nice mango, and three-week-old-ass, depending on who you ask. I haven't really made a call on the flavor as no one has offered it to me and I have not yet bothered to try, though I did enjoy a durian milkshake once, a long time ago. I do know that it smells awful (and is not allowed on airplanes in Southeast Asia due to its potentially nausea-inducing effects in close quarters).

Cambodians find endless amusement in foreigners hatred of durian. "Ah, you like that?" one man said, grinning, as I took this photo.

"No, I don't think so," I said, "though I do like krowd (pomelo)."

"None of you like it! Too smelly," he observed, still laughing as he walked away.



Kampot is proud of its durian crop, and happens to have a massive, ornate statue of one smack-dab in the center of town. It is attractively lit up at night and attracts a large number of families. Adults sit and chat around the Giant Durian, and little children chase each other around The Giant Durian, and a small fountain plays around the edges. If only it possessed the olfactory abilities of the real thing.

The Sailing Club: Relaxing All Classy in Kep

The Sailing Club
Kep, Cambodia



Ah, the Sailing Club.

There isn't much to do in Kep. There is really, really nothing much to do in Kep. This is, in my opinion, its greatest virtue. The best place to do nothing in Kep is the Sailing Club. It's part of Knai Bang Chatt, a luxury Belgian-owned resort here in Cambodia, and although the hotel itself is rich for my blood, you can hang out as much as you'd like at the adjoining restaurant and small sun-bathing area.



It's called the Sailing Club because they do indeed offer boat rentals and lessons, as well as ski boats and canoes. There's volleyball, ping pong, and petanque too (whatever the fuck that is) if you tire of sitting on a lounge chair, reading, and staring out to the ocean. I am in the latter category. It's a tiny, rather rocky beach here but it is private, no one is selling you stuff, and someone will bring you a fruity beverage within roughly three minutes. Perfect.



There's even a nice pier you can walk out on and dip your feet in the water and watch the sun go down speculatively. I am very fond of this pier.



There's also food. There's an ala-carte restaurant - haven't tried that yet - which is set in the drop dead gorgeous and almost Cape Cod esque dining area. Think white furniture, seashells as muted accents, lots of rope, and windows built wide open to the sea, all done incedibly tastefully. I love that room.



Every Saturday, the Sailing Club does a buffet. Ten bucks a person. It's a fantastic deal. There's a salad bar, a made to order pasta bar, a bunch of hot plates - including Kampot pepper crabs - and a grill station with fish, shrimp, squid, and beef. For dessert, there's cake, fresh fruit, and banana-sago soup (which I love).



It's shocking how rare decent potato salad is in Asia. This was good potato salad. I'm not even that into potato salad but this was delicious.




Khmer-style raw beef salad - it's just ceviche with beef, and just as good. Lime juice, onion, tons of herbs, and all deliciousness.



There's a Grill Your Own Seafood outlet here - all fresh and grilled to order. Beef and chicken too if you're one of those poor unseafood loving bastards. There's also a pasta bar and soups and some big vats of pre-prepared Khmer stir-fries, and Kampot pepper crabs and probably some stuff I'm forgetting. 10 bucks a pop.


Another good point of the Sailing Club? It does give back. Founded by two Belgians, it's affiliated with Hand in Hand Cambodia, which aids in village development, - in affiliation with a couple of other Belgian associations, Knai Bang Chatt has devoted a lot of time and attention to the nearby village of Chamchar Bei. Knai Bang Chatt and the Sailing Club also hires staff trained by charities in Phnom Penh that specialize in giving street kids skills in the tourist industry. One beautifully professional (and kinda hot) staff member was an alumni of Phnom Penh's well known Hagar training restaurant.

Kimly: The Kep Crab Market Ultimate Guide

Kimly Restaurant
Crab Market (it's a very small town)
Kep, Cambodia





In my bid to produce the World's Most Comprehensive Guide to the Kep Crab Market, I present to you The Kimly Restaurant. I do all this research because I am a giver and I give to humanity. I also spend a lot of time in Kep and possess a profound and personal interest in eating crustaceans. I have nothing against them, but they're delicious.




I ordered the Kampot Pepper Crab, the thing to order here (naturally).

This is what I'm gathering is the traditional method of doing Kampot pepper crab up. A thick sauce with a lot of kreung - Cambodian spice paste - in the mix. It's got a great flavor with a lot of chili, a bit of coconut milk (I suspect), some ginger, and the fresh bite of the Kampot pepper. They use green pepper instead of onion and green onion in the stir-fry mix - I prefer it the other way. I also think the thick sauce is a bit too salty. Ultimately, I like Trei's lighter/less thick version better. Lets the taste of the crab come through


Kimly's interior. It's a nice place to hang out.

The plate of crab cost 9 dollars, which is actually more then Trei down the strip a bit at 7. (The fact that I am quibbling over the price of a giant plate of fresh-caught crabs is technically hilarious as this would cost 30 bucks in the USA, but regardless). Still, the portion size is immense and it's a great place to hang out and watch the fisherfolk do their thing, pulling traps and setting them out again.



Here's a recipe from the BBC (of all places) for Kampot pepper crab. I am testing this out when I get home, though getting fresh peppercorns may prove a challenge. I am not very fond of dry pepper, but I am growing more and more partial to these little green jobbys. You can buy them pickled in jars here at the crab market, along with pickled shrimp and crabs and other sea creatures I find hard to identify. I love the crab market.

Trei: Best Dang Crab Market Seafood in Kep

Trei
Crab Market
Kep, Cambodia


The view outside the crab market's restaurants. It's salubrious.

Kep is famous for its "crab market," which is what they tell you all about in the guide books. The guidebooks made me think this would be some kind of elaborate affair, but the reality is that the Crab Market is a strip of 8 or so restaurants right up next to one another, all of them serving the fresh seafood Kep is known for, all of them at rock bottom prices, and insofar as I can determine, they're all pretty good. Within such close proximity of each other, they'd have to be.

I selected Trei because they were not playing bad electronica inside and it seemed a tic or two more upscale then the others judging by napkin-folding skill and the furnishings. It's little things like this that stave off the food poisoning when eating crab in a third world country. And it was this I intended to do. Trei means "fish" in Khmer. You learned something, just now.



The menu, as is expected, focuses on Kep's remarkable array of super fresh seafood. There's everything from whole fish (multiple varieties) to skate to squid to crab to shrimp on the menu. As crab is my favorite food, my choice was an easy one. I picked the crab with sauteed Kampot peppercorns. A medium serving goes for a princely 7 bucks. I also chose the stir-fried morning glory with chili and garlic, which is a traditional Southeast Asian accompaniment to crab, and also happens to be delicious.

The restaurant, like all the restaurants here, is built right out over the water, which means you can hear the water lapping underneath you and watch the fisherpeople (mostly women) bring in their nets or traps. The restaurants all keep their stock in little bamboo traps underneath or beside the restaurants. Trei's cooking team seemed to consist of a fat middle aged women in a small open-kitchen off to the side, with a couple other girls peeling things.



The crab was absolutely fantastic. Ultra-fresh. Bits of bright orange roe hanging off the bottom. They're small crabs, and you have to work a lot to get at them, but they are worth it. The fresh peppercorn is really a pretty delightful thing if you haven't had them before - I am not fond of dried pepper but I have a taste for the fresh stuff, which is less harsh and more invigorating. They're also served with a sprig of green onion. The Crab Market's other restaurants prepare it with a thicker sauce with a lot more spice paste in it, but I personally prefer Trei's more delicate, subtle variant on such. You can taste the crab better.

The serve of morning-glory was also immense and also delicious, with plenty of garlic and chili. It's a standard dish and doesn't vary much, but they certainly gave me enough for 2 bucks.



A note must also be made on Trei's green mango salad. It's another Khmer standby and is often treated rather apathetially. This was a revelation: tons of flavor, tons of peanuts and dried shrimp, a sharp and perfectly sweet chili dressing. Fried shallots and the little sweet ones I love so much here. It's perfect on a hot-ass day, which are most Cambodian days.



The inside of Trei has wooden tables and the napkins are folded all pretty. This is why it's the Upscale choice. The prices, however, are on par with the other crab market establishments.



I came back to Trei twice because I felt loyal and because I could think of no ultra compelling reason not to do so. That night, I came back and had the sampler seafood platter. It's a bit of a splurge for a Cambodian-budgeted type at 11.00, but you get: two prawns, fish fillet, squid, and boiled crab, with accompanying sauces. That kind of platter would be $30 bucks and served with attitude in the USA.



To be able to afford all this and a glass of wine at the age of 22 is something of a realized dream - I cannot tell a lie. It's the freshness that really makes Kep's seafood remarkable. They're swimming around in bamboo traps until you eat them. It's all very simple.

Yok Yor Seafood, Bangkok: Beer and Innocent Sea-Life

Yok Yor Seafood Restaurant
885 Soi Somdet Chao Praya 17, Bangkok, Thailand
#863-0565-6

There's an entire genre of Thai water-front seaside restaurants - an entire genre of Asian water-front restaurants, really. They crop up from Hong Kong to Vietnam to Singapore to Taiwan, and they all specialize in fresh seafood, chilled beer, and some sort of musical "entertainment" (depending on your proclivities). Yok Yor is a classic example of the genre: on the banks of Bangkok's river, it features tanks of live seafood, a very extensive menu, a sappy Thai singer and a karaoeke stand. Oh, and girls in tight-fitting and skimpy beer dresses.

As is the case with most of these restaurants, the food is fabulous.

Yok Yor is right next door to the Millenium Hilton hotel and we could probably have walked, but the guy at the dock said they'd send a boat for us. And it's sort of hard to resist being personally delivered to a restaurant via a boat. The boat, however, appeared to miss us sitting all hungry-like on the dock, so the Hilton guy's agreed to make a special dropoff for us.

We sat by the river and watched Thailand's startlingly glittery party-boats go by. I perused the money. If it swims and is tasty, they have it here, along with the full complement of Thai dishes and some Chinese and Western stuff besides. My mother was on the hunt for prawns - those massive, beefy Thai monsters that lurk in the semi-saline waters of the region. I live for crab, and so I wanted to get a crab (because, well, why wouldn't I). And then, there was the consideration of sea-bass steamed in a preserved lemon sauce.

We threw up our hands and just ordered all three. And a papaya salad for palate-cleansing. Som tum is good for that.

These prawns are Godzilla-like and would probably intimidate anyone with a bit of an insect phobia. They were scandalously good. The meat was tender, pink, and streaked with buttery red roe, and there was a lot of it.

You could suck out the heads like a good crawfish, and these were buttery and delicious also. There was a sweet chili sauce on the side for dipping, but there wasn't really a point, not with prawns that tasted like this.

The crab was a big, meaty local crab cooked in the usual yellow curry and green onion sauce. Big and fresh and with very sweet meat. The sauce was subtle and didn't hide the flavor of the crabmeat. This was a smaller crab and sometimes I wonder what kind of beasts they've got lurking in the back of the restaurant. Do they take off the cook's fingers on a regular basis?

Finally, the seabass. The preserved lemon sauce is something I hadn't tried yet in Thailand, and it was very good: extremely tangy and perfectly suited to the firm fish. Not overdone, as has been known to happen with whole fish, and not underdone, either. Make them blow out the atmospheric flame they stick under the serving plate for you, since it WILL get overcooked if you let it burn.

We somehow managed to devour just about all of it. The boats went by and there were a lot of families around us drinking beer. There were two precocious children singing karaoke inside the restaurant who really should not have been encouraged in this by their families. The beer-girls were here, there, and everywhere. It was, I think, a moment quintessentially Bangkok.

Yok Yor is expensiveish, especially if you get greedy and order everything like we did. It'll still cost less money then a fancified place without beer girls and karaoke and with subdued lighting and hip music, and who the hell wants that when you're getting down and dirty with some seafood, anyway? I mean, really. They'll even send a boat down for you and bring you back if you're staying along the river. Dinner and a Ride.