Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Cambodia's Kep: Sleepy seaside town begins to stir

This September 2010 photo provided by Soula Walters shows Cambodian vendors selling shrimp and other seafood at the Crab Market, a motley collection of seaside shacks that make up the main drag in Kep, Cambodia. (Soula Walters / AP)

9/28/2010

By MIKE ECKEL
The Associated Press


KOH TONSAY, Cambodia — Ask for the crab. In black peppercorn sauce.

The proprietor of the thatched-roof and bamboo-walled island restaurant will acknowledge the order in sign language and broken English. She'll shuffle across the seaside grass over to the dock where the crab cages sit, steeping in the Gulf of Thailand's tepid waters.

She'll return with a bucket of crustaceans and fry them in an iron wok over a charcoal fire in her open-air kitchen, searing them in a sauce made largely from sweet, fiery Kampot peppercorns. She'll bring you a heap of steaming seafood, pepper sauce, paper napkins and beer to the shaded picnic tables. You'll eat the crab — soft-shells and all — sucking the sauce from your fingers, drinking the beer to blunt the fiery pepper and thank the stars that few people have discovered the culinary and aesthetic pleasures of this southern coastal region.
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