IT looked as if 2008 might be a breakout year for Cambodian food after epicurious.com predicted in December that it would become the new Thai.
OLD AND NEW The catfish crepe at Kampuchea.
In June, Jerry Ley opened Cambodian Cuisine, which moved from Brooklyn.
Yet here it is September, and we seem to have only two Cambodian restaurants in New York City: a relocated Cambodian Cuisine and a revived Kampuchea.
Kampuchea isn’t even really Cambodian; Cambodian-inspired is more like it. Kampuchea, Khmer for Cambodia, opened in 2006 on the Lower East Side as Kampuchea Noodle Bar, a name that remains on its awning but not in its publicity. (A good thing too, as noodle bar pretty much says, “I want to be Momofuku.”)
The chef, Ratha Chau, was a child when his family fled Cambodia. This may be why Kampuchea evokes an expatriate’s vision, looking like an old shop front, with dark wood communal tables and drinks in Mason jars.
Initial reviews complained of a reticence in seasoning. Two years on, that has been redressed, as brazenly exemplified by the plate of pickles ($8) that ratchet up in heat clockwise. Equally aggressive is the bwah moun ($15), a chili ginger lime broth laden with rice, shrimp and chicken.
Mr. Chau is ostensibly focused on street food, but he harbors greater ambitions. Green papaya, traditionally a julienne in a salad, is run through a mandoline and paired with strips of cured duck breast ($11), coolly sweet and salty at once. Less successful are sweetbreads, which soak too long in a mushroom broth.
To serve authentic food seems less of a priority than to appeal to the young and restless who haunt the Lower East Side. The grilled corn and chili mayonnaise, sticky with coconut ($6), is more South American than Southeast Asian.
A savory crepe cradles peppered catfish ($14). Variations on num pang, a sandwich akin to the Vietnamese banh mi, come on sturdy baguettes ($12 to $16). Fillings like house-cured bacon, tucked in with charred chilies ($13), earn happy sighs. But veal hoisin meatballs err on the sweet side, and the oxtail was anemic.
In June a less glamorous Cambodian outpost appeared on the Upper East Side. The forthrightly named Cambodian Cuisine started life in Fort Greene, but Manhattanites visiting the Brooklyn Academy of Music urged the chef, Jerry Ley, to move. Trouble with permits, faulty piping and a threat of eviction delayed its opening for nearly three years.
The new space feels like the charming, hodgepodge restaurants you’d find in Phnom Penh: a family affair, with the chef’s wife and sister out front; Khmer wedding music trilling; TVs playing sports with the sound down. (All that’s missing is karaoke.)
The menu is bewilderingly long and vague. Neophytes may wind up with a meal they can get at a Chinese restaurant. Best to heed the house favorites, including ahmok, a highlight of Cambodian home cooking ($14.95). Customarily made with fish steamed in curry until it achieves a mousse-like texture, here it takes the form of chicken, breaded with curry and swamped in coconut curd. It’s delicious, with biting citrus notes and a subtle flare of heat.
The same goes for prahok, the fermented mudfish paste that’s in nearly every Khmer dish. It takes a starring role in prahok ktis, with ground chicken and the national spice palette of galangal, ginger and lemon grass, served with vegetables to dip ($17.95). The flavor is gratifyingly deep.
No meal in Cambodia is complete without soup, or samlor, and the versions found here are the real deal, a pitched battle between sour and sweet, whether teeming with turmeric (samlor mchoo kroeurng, $14.95) or chunky with tomato and pineapple (samlor mchoo moen, $3.95).
In a concession to local palates, salmon is offered: fried, of all things. Go for the tilapia instead ($17.95), a closer approximation of Mekong River fish.
If Cambodian Cuisine represents the old Cambodia, gracious and earnest, Kampuchea is the new: erratic but exciting. Poised at opposite ends of the East Side, the restaurants are not so much rivals as points on a spectrum.
Kampuchea
78 Rivington Street (Allen Street); (212) 529-3901; kampucheanyc.com.
CREDIT CARDS No American Express.
HOURS Tuesday to Thursday, 5:30 to 11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, noon to 4 p.m. and 5:30 to 11:30 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 4 p.m. and 5:30 to 10:30 p.m.
WHEELCHAIR ACCESS Yes.
Cambodian Cuisine
1664 Third Avenue (93rd Street); (212) 348-9100; cambodiancuisinenyc.com.
CREDIT CARDS All major cards.
HOURS Daily, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
WHEELCHAIR ACCESS Yes.
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