Culinary Blog

Kek Soon’s Cambodian Kitchen is an exciting story, a foodie story unique from the regular crop of cooking shows. It tells how Kek Soon and her young chefs are building their own futures and doing this by visiting high-end resorts, hotels and hospitality ventures, through to traveling to remote villages, coastal fish markets, and indigenous communities in the highlands. None of our young team of chefs has ever been to the city before. Each of Soon’s students are daughters of fishermen and have rarely had the opportunity to travel much beyond their small village communities. Needless to say the Thalias offer to host this group is incredibly exciting but still, parents would need to understand more about the project and learn for themselves and the sake of their kids, why such an experience is so important for young ones striving for a future. Arriving at the splendid Arunreas Hotel was an eye-popping experience for all as we rolled out the mini-van door. It’s a wonderfully appointed storied Hotel and a place that was once upon a time the US Embassy in Phnom Penh. Flash cars surround the entrance and once inside, you are in a sanctuary and a real escape from the bustling city outside. We were immediately welcomed and felt very much at home. Wonderful rooms and super-size bathtubs, a couple of the kids thought these might actually be little swimming pools! Not only was it their first time in the city but first time experiencing a luxury hotel and a place where they were made to feel very welcome as guests, not just a group of aspiring young students. First and perhaps the most important stop was Malis Restaurant. This is a legendary part of the Cambodian cuisine story and of course, it’s the restaurant right at the heart of the Thalias story. Malis was the first step in an incredible, 26-year partnership between founders Arnaud Darc and chef Luu Meng. It’s a journey that really mirrors Cambodia’s own remarkable development story and is very much at the centre of the Kingdom’s return to a sophistication and a quality of hospitality that had all but vanished during the decades long civil war in Cambodia. Today, Thalias Hospitality Group’s famed restaurants, delis and bakeries and luxurious Arunreas hotel are jewels in the crown of the hospitality industry in Cambodia. Malis is at the centre of the contemporary Cambodian cuisine story and a must-do dinning experience for any gourmand visiting Cambodia, so it’s no surprise it’s seen long list of famous and distinguished guests. But today we were all made to feel like VIP’s and our young chefs loved this experience, especially Luu Hong’s launch example, taking typical rice noodle dish found everywhere across Cambodia and explaining how Malis has pioneered contemporary Cambodian cuisine through carefully considered and highly creative rewordings of traditional flavours and ingredients. Through sitting down to a delicious lunch of steaming hot noodle soup and an in person explanation from Sous Chef Luu Hong, our young team understood they were on a trip like no other, a really exceptional chance to learn. Day two provided an action packed tour of Khéma Pasteur exceptionally organized all-in-one bakery, café, deli and gourmet restaurant. This was especially exciting for our young team as many have already spent the last year learning to bake at FICAC’s little countryside kitchen. Now to see a fully professional French bakery in action was a real eye-opener. Trays of delicious French pastry classics flying out of ovens while baking staff, worked dough into delicious fresh bread and a front of house worked a well-stocked delicatessen, and showed how Khéma’s free flow breakfast makes it one of the cities most popular dinning experiences. Next stop was Topaz and a chance to see a high-class Phnom Penh restaurant the genuine French fine dining experience its renowned for in action. The feel of Topaz and it’s vast open space in the middle of a bustling city is the first experiential effect that meets you on arrival but then it’s also the professionalism of staff and management. On this occasional we were met with founder Arnaud Darc alongside Topaz general manager Lina Hak and Sous Chef Sopheak Pov who each took time to introduce the story behind Topaz and show how a dedication to staff training and the working environment makes this a place where Michelin-starred chefs have come to visit and share their own experience with local staff. We also came to see and understand more and more how local NGO PSE – Pour un Sourire d’Enfant underscores everything in the Cambodian hospitality industry. Not only at the Thalias group but also at other leading resorts, we found that most of the staff had started out at PSE and had moved into real careers. We also learned that part of this story includes a rather remarkable individual know simply at Papa Chef – a larger than life character whom we’d had a wonderful encounter with early that morning. Alain Darc, affectionately known as Papa Chef loams large in the story of Cambodian hospitality. Alain, father of Arnaud Darc, has spent a lifetime in kitchens and comes from a long line of cooks and cuisine heritage going way back to French Royalty. In Cambodia Papa Chef is best known for his years of voluntary teaching at PSE as well as commercial kitchens where he is both revered and loved for this contribution to training many young Cambodian who have literally come from nothing to achieve real success and to build their own careers. Overall this has been an essential part of the success of today’s hospitality industry success in Cambodia. I think our young group of cooks may have caught Papa Chef by surprise but together they made for a great picture as Alain Darc recounted his own experience from an early age “it’s good you kids are starting early… you must start learning young… I was already cooking the French Fries at just 8 years old!” French Fries was certainly popular with our kids from Fish Island during their … Read more

Dressed to Slay and Here to Stay Every morning, Nov Meansambo routinely wakes up at 4 am, prepares a hot espresso, and starts her workout routine. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle while establishing herself as a career woman, has recently become Nov’s goal as she enters her 40s. Armed with a perfect ensemble of tailored outfits and careful makeup, Nov represents the modern cosmopolitan woman and an iconic figure in Thalias Hospitality as its General Manager. Born in Phnom Penh, Nov has spent much time in Siem Reap and has over 20 years of experience in the hospitality industry. Nov has been working with Thalias for 5 years after starting out as General Manager at Khema La Poste and then was transferred into management over the restaurant, Malis, for 2 years. She learned early at a young age that she had to work hard to get far in life. She recalls the responsibility she bore as a child, waking at sunrise to prepare meals for taxi drivers and vendors in front of Phsar Depo Market as part of her family duties. Her upbringing for community and family has followed her to adulthood, as she would often spend her free time donating blood to the local children’s hospital or reading to the local school children. “Never put boundary to yourself no matter where you came from,” Nov advised. “Regardless of how bad(suffering) of your past —you will get through it when you put your heart into what you do.” Nov is not only is fluent in English and Japanese as well as her native tongue, Khmer; but she has also made it her goal to travel as much as she can. She has visited Japan 7 times for business. “I would love to bring my parents to see Cherry Blossom when Japan opens its doors after Covid,“ Nov confined. The earlier days of the pandemic travel restrictions pushed her to put her responsibilities into overdrive. “I did come to work every day regardless,” Nov said grimly. “I keep motivating my team despite the difficult time.” Nov donated to families who were struck hard by the pandemic, supporting her staff and managing the team during health emergencies and difficulties with the availability of supplies. Fearing burnout, Nov tries to keep her life balanced with physical activities, watching movies and cooking shows on Netflix and daydreaming of travelling. Loyalty and Commitment — to the Job After two decades in the hospitality industry, Nov feels at home with Thalias. “ Thalias has been always empowering each and every women team member,” Nov stated. “Especially (by) the strong motivation to women, showing and guiding us (in) how to build self-confidence and the capability to grow stronger and bolder by keeping sharing and training us in skills, knowledges and life experiences.” Nov explained that there are good opportunities for women to pursue a career in hospitality, with the soft skills of human interactions, being professional, and having a strong commitment to the job. Although she has faced some challenges based on her gender along the way, her commitment to her job and career has given her the strength to overcome any obstacle. Some of the best tips she can offer are to invest in teamwork, to pursue the commitment to the job, and that there are no shortcuts to success. “Team work is the most valuable asset and in treating them as the first customers,” Nov advised. “The more you share in knowledge and skills, the better they are. So we have a strong team to grow and succeed altogether.” “Hospitality is one of the most fragile service industries, yet it provides lots of opportunities and challenges to grow,” she added. “Perseverance always pays and never give up. A difficult road often leads to a beautiful destination.” Thirdly, “never underestimate the thickness of iceberg, what we can see just a small top, which means we can see other people’s success easily,” Nov pointed out. “But we don’t know how much effort, hard works, stresses, commitment, persistence, failure, sacrifice that (the person) puts in order to achieve their goal.” Written by Sotheavy Nou

Enjoying the Fruit Success Its been two years since the start of the pandemic and life has changed drastically for Cham Reoun Pok. Now the general manager of the renowned Malis restaurant in Phnom Penh, Pok is enjoying her 40s as an independent woman overseeing the pride of Cambodian cuisine. Born in Battambang province, Pok spent most of her youth in Takeo province. She worked her way up in various venues in the hospitality industry — from restaurant manager in 2012 to operation manager in 2017, and now she is celebrating her latest promotion to general management. Supervising the daily operations, she recruits and trains the staff as well as inspects the accounting and marketing of Malis. Mothering Autonomy As a mother of two daughters, Pok wants to set a good example for them and hopes to provide as many opportunities as she can for other women who are looking to have a strong career and who would like to live self-sufficiently. At the age of 21 and 18, both daughters live in their own apartment in the city, a process Pok encourages more families to arrange. Although many young adults often travel to the city to work and live on their own, most daughters live with their parents until they get engaged or married. It’s an unconventional path, Pok agreed, but she thinks it’s important for her daughters to learn how to be adults on their own. “I want my daughters to be independent when they make wrong decisions,” Pok explained. “They’ll learn better.” She still meets with her daughters and continues to give advice as they pursue their education and careers, but she also gives them the freedom to find their identities as adults without feeling the need to control their every choice. Pruning Expectations Looking back on her life, Pok often wonders where she would have been now if she had listened to every critic or to the expectations placed on her as a woman. Under Khmer culture, she was expected to put any career aside for the sake of the family. She sees many women who think they can only look after children or the elderly without even considering a career of their own. She was told many times that she could not do a job because she was a woman and that she would be expected to be devoted to her family rather than her career. Pok proved them wrong. Not only did she put in extra hours to complete the tasks in her job, but she pushed for her daughters to do the same. Invest in themselves, aspire for more, and seek opportunities in their careers. Seeing her daughter thrive in their own spaces brings joy to Pok. In her eyes, they represent a shift for women in Cambodia. “Nowadays, the young generation changes their mind a lot, for example, they can move out from their family’s countryside home to the city to continue their study and at the same time get part time job,” Pok stated. “It means that they trying to live independent lives, without their family support.” Pok believes that breaking the rules of an outdated concept is part of every generation’s legacy. Smiling over a cup of coffee and a signature Malis rice cracker, she smiles. It was now her turn to enjoy the fruit of her own labours.

Brunch, (noun) a late morning meal eaten instead of breakfast and lunch. Origin: late 19th century, a blend of breakfast and lunch. The 1896 supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary cites Punch magazine which wrote that the term was coined in Britain in 1895 to describe a Sunday meal for “Saturday-night carousers” in the writer Guy Beringer’s article “Brunch: A Plea” in Hunter’s Weekly’. Instead of England’s early Sunday dinner, a post church ordeal of heavy meats and savoury pies, why not a new meal, served around noon, that starts with tea or coffee, marmalade and other breakfast fixtures before moving along to the heavier fare? By eliminating the need to get up early on Sunday, brunch would make life brighter for Saturday-night carousers. It would promote human happiness in other ways as well. “Brunch is cheerful, sociable and inciting.” Beringer wrote. “It is talk-compelling. It puts you in a good temper, it makes you satisfied with yourself and your fellow beings, it sweeps away the worries and cobwebs of the week.” – William Grimes, “At Brunch, The More Bizarre the Better” New York Times, 1998 It is sometimes credited to reporter Frank Ward O’Malley who wrote for the New York newspaper The Sun from 1906 until 1919, allegedly based on the typical mid-day eating habits of a newspaper reporter. Brunch is Genius Never wake up too late for a meal, Brunch, Hung-over, Brunch, early glass of booze with your bacon and eggs, Brunch, hang with friends to reconstruct the night before, Brunch, want eggs late or steak early, Brunch. If there is anything more intimate, pleasurable and enjoyable than a long, lazy Brunch with friends then you simply wouldn’t be able to do it outdoors, (although you might all talk about it later say, whilst masticating over Brunch!) An Ode to Brunch “Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are.” Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin: ‘The Physiology of Taste’ (1825) Brunch is without question the most civilized of all concepts of eating, yet it is culinary, social rebellion personified. Brunch will not rise early for a morning jog and some roughage with the breaking day, brunch will not wait for the sun to go over the yard arm and announce a respectable hour to commune with liquor. Brunch will not be hurried, nor conform to a particular appointment, no one ever raced to a quick Brunch appointment before heading off to their next meeting. Brunch is a semi-formed concept where you straggle in when you are physically able, graze as slowly and for as long as you like and leave when you are sated, quenched, when you feel absolved of your sins, once dear friends have warmed your heart, when your mind is at peace with the world and you feel cleansed in your soul. Brunch is reflection, repair and resurrection. Brunch is communion; with family or friends, gone are the formalities and expectations that come with dinner, or the awkward and impossible notion that is an informal lunch, Brunch says, just come if you want and arrive when you like, wear whatever you can lay your hands on, eat whatever you feel like, drink whatever takes your fancy, sate your allotriophagy and take your time about it. Brunch says, relax and perhaps, if you feel like it, let’s talk about whatever we like, whimsical and silly, philosophical and epic, there is no family crisis or broken heart that cannot be solved or resolved over a good, long Brunch. Brunch is an oasis; breakfast, lunch and dinner are part of our daily routine but Brunch exists somewhere beyond these parameters, it Brunch is the meal of the Lotophagi, a languid, indolent and dreamy grazing. It is a portal to another dimension, one that lies beyond the stresses and hustle of our worldly samsara, where we can escape to a form of gastronomical meditation that transcends the nausea of daily existence. Brunch is where time stops for us and nothing exists beyond the boundaries of our little garden of nirvana, our table setting, the fluffy, bitter/sweet consistency of the hollandaise sauce, drizzled lovingly over the perfectly poached eggs and Canadian bacon of our Benedictine viands, the creamy, frothy truth of a strong café latte and the spa like absolution that is a glass of morning prosecco. Brunch as an antidote for frustration: Seneca was the father of Stoicism and an advisor to the insane Roman emperor Nero, he was deeply interested in the source of anger and frustration and concluded that the source of all frustration was the collision between the real world and our expectations of it. The world and all of its phenomena go on being and acting as they are but, when they do not act in accordance with our belief in the way they should act, we become frustrated and at times, even angry. Seneca felt that the wise should start each day with the thought: Fortune gives us nothing which we can really own. Nothing, whether public or private, is stable; the destinies of people, no less than those of cities are in a whirl…We live in the middle of things…Reckon on everything, expect everything. The sanctuary of a contemplative Brunch, alone in a tranquil garden or a quiet corner in a café can give us the time and space to look back at the world and reflect on its nature, allowing us, from this calm inlet amidst the turbulent swell of life’s ocean, to reconcile within ourselves the world as it is and the world as we see it: We may be powerless to alter certain events, but we remain free to choose our attitude towards them. It is in our spontaneous acceptance of necessity that we find our distinctive freedom. Brunch is freedom. Brunch is glossophagine; we eat brunch lovingly, we eat with our tongues, not as reptiles but as sensual creatures, as Eve licked the apple in such a manner as to convince Adam to forgo eternal life for … Read more

Solea Solea (The Life of a Common Sole) The Solea solea species of the Soleidae, (flat fish) family, gets its name from the Latin word for sandals. It is sometimes called Common Sole but, most famously it is known as Dover Sole. The Dover Sole takes its name from the fact that the British fishing fleet out of Dover supplied more of this highly desirable fish to the Billingsgate fish markets than any other. The Dover Sole likes the warmer waters south of the British Isles, the English Channel, Irish Sea and southern parts of the North Sea. Some claim the best quality are caught off the Bay of Biscay. A right eyed flat fish with its mouth on the left, Dover Sole lives in shallow sea beds of sand and shingle. Interestingly, this unusual delicacy is born as a normal fish, with an eye on each side of its head, only to undergo a strange metamorphosis -where the left eye moves over onto the right side of the body- once they reach about 1 cm long. Sole grow to a maximum length of about 70 centimeters long and are quite thick and plump for a flatfish. The Dover Sole takes between 3 to 5 years to reach full maturity and if smaller fish are caught commercially they are called a ‘slip’. Slip fried in butter is a popular dish in the Netherlands. Sole are a grey/brown, mottled and darkish colour on the tope side, with a white underside, they have small eyes and mouth, a long fin running down the top and bottom of their body and a small tail fin. Technically, they lay in shallow sea bed on their side, with their two eyes on the upward facing side of their body. Sole Food “I like Dover sole. It’s always one of my favorites. I like it when I’m in England. I eat it every day almost. I think it’s probably one of my favorite fish.” — Chef and restaurateur Wolfgang Puck The Dover sole is famous for its delicate taste and firm texture, it is sometimes described by chefs and food critics as a meat-eaters fish and is the fundamental ingredient in perhaps the finest and most acclaimed seafood dish in the world, ‘Sole Meunière’. It turns out that this glorious dish is a rather straight forward dish to prepare, just so long as you have the right sole fish, (Dover) its fresh and is treated it with a venerable amount of respect. For a fish sometimes referred to as ‘Common’ it is anything but, and will often be the most expensive seafood dish on the menu. Whilst there are other sole-fish species, (that sometimes borrow the name) it is only the ‘Dover’ Sole -from the coastlines around Britain and the English Channel- that produce a dish of such exceptional refinement and joyous palatability. The French term Meunière means miller in English, (as in flour miller) which refers to the fish being coated in flour prior to cooking, this protects its texture and enhances its flavour, by creating a delicate brown coating when frying the fish. The Sole Meunière is then cooked in clarified butter, seasoned and served with parsley and lemon juice. It is known to have been a favourite dish of France’s ‘Sun King’, Louis XIV, (1638-1715) and whilst there is no definitive history of the dish, its simplicity alone suggests that it is probably very, very old. In 1951, whilst living in Paris, American chef Julia Child graduated from the famous ‘Cordon Bleu’ cooking school in Paris and later studied privately with Max Bugnard and other master chefs. She joined the women’s cooking club ‘Le Cercle des Gourmettes’, through which she met Simone Beck, who was writing a French cookbook for Americans with her friend Louisette Bertholle. These three began to teach cooking to American women in Child’s Paris kitchen, calling their informal school ‘L’école des trois gourmands’. Their book, ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking’ was first published in 1961 and was an instant best-seller, the book is still in print today and is considered a seminal culinary work. This opened up further opportunities for Child, who went on to write for newspapers and magazines and started her own television show ‘The French Chef’ in 1963. The show would run for ten years and collected many awards and was extremely popular with American housewives of the day who made her a star. Julia Child would go on to write many more bestselling cookbooks and star in many more cooking shows for television. A precursor to the celebrity chefs of the current era, and people like Martha Stewart, Child was the most famous culinary personality in the United States at the peak of her career, and one of American television’s biggest stars. Such was her fame that today, her actual home kitchen sits on display in the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of American History. Long before all the cooking fame started, when Child first moved to France with her husband back in 1948, they had travelled by sea, (a rough one apparently) and docked at Le Harve. Driving themselves to Paris, they stopped along the way for what would be their very first meal in their new homeland. The couple pulled into La Couronne in Rouen, Normandy, up until then Childs husband -himself a well-traveled gourmand- had been teaching her a great deal on how to appreciate good food, fine wine and the art of the table; after this meal nothing in Child’s life would ever be the same again. The experience had such a profound effect on Child that she wrote about it many times, re-counting it in great detail, and describing it to the New York Times as “an opening up of the soul and spirit for me”, she would later recall in her memoir “at La Couronne I experienced fish, and a dining experience, of a higher order than any I’d ever had before’. Yet it almost never happened: “At … Read more

Thursday nights are for… Wine & Dine at Khéma. Gather up with your best friends and indulge in our signature Wine & Dine featuring unlimited servings of our favourite wines, All-You-Can-Eat cheese, cold cuts and much more from our generous counter for only $25 net special deal (until end of March instead of $29.90 net person). Every Thursday from 6PM to 8PM Book your favorite Khéma now https://khema-restaurant.com/reservations/