Jungle Food Marathon Part 2: Cambodia and Vietnam

Continuing on my report of the Jungle Food Marathon with FoodMarathon, LA&OC Foodie, FoodDestination, DigLounge, Teenage Glutster, Mattatouille, and Choisauce (who in between this and the first post, has started her own blog!!).

After our nice Peruvian meal, we went further south to Long Beach to Siem Reap, a Cambodian restaurant with Cambodian music videos playing on the background. I know DigLounge in particular *really* enjoyed this song Dhoom Dhoom ...

We ordered quite a variety of dishes including the Beef and anchovy saladSome Beef lok lak (they didn't have venison) - marinated square chunks of meat cooked with some peppery sauce.
These are pretty basic, but delicious and particularly tender. I can see how they can be a staple food.

Another "typical" Cambodian dish is the fish and sadao leaves salad
Definitely different/interesting. The sadao leaves were, yes, bitter.

We also got some pork curry (pictured below) and fish paste that you eat with various raw veggies
I actually enjoyed this pork curry quite a bit - a tad spicy but not too much so even for me.

The Fish Paste stunk of rotten meat to me and I really could not eat it (I can't believe you guys ate this but can't handle durian! :P )

Siem Reap
1810 E Anaheim St
Long Beach, CA 90813
(562) 591-7414


Next we ventured down to the Westminster area, to a Vietnamese bistro called Quan Hop. Prices here are slightly higher than usual for VNese food, but it is a bistro with a nice ambiance and probably caters to the younger crowd.

We started off with these small appetizers called Banh Beos, which are steamed rice pancakes with dried shrimps, scallions etc in the middle, served with fish sauce.
Really enjoyed this - the toppings were delicious and savory. The rice pancake itself is pretty light and nicely chewy.

We also got a vegetarian version of these, but they tasted and looked pretty similar, so no extra photo/description.

Next we had some banhitram: fried glutinous rice flour filled with shrimp, pork and mushrooms
This is the dish that really stood out in my mind from this particular stop - different and delicious. Chewy mochi-like rice cakes - these were bordering on 'dessert-y' for me (even with the shrimp/pork inside), but they are delicious little things and I definitely recommend you guys try them!

The other dishes we tried that night were all good, although the ones I remembered well were the ones noted above. The others include a jackfruit salad:
and tu tiu hop dai, a vermicelli dish with pork and shrimp
Quan Hop definitely has some interesting selections I don't normally see elsewhere and has a nice bistro ambiance.

Quan Hop
15640 Brookhurst St
Westminster, CA 92683
(714) 689-0555


We ended our day(night) on a sweeter note: sugar cane juice from Nuoc Mia Vien Tay (just down the street from Quan Hop)! The sugar cane juice here is freshly squeezed (is that the write verb here?) and enhanced by kumquats, as you can see below:
Nice, cold, refreshing, and cheap! The kumquats definitely add a nice citrusy note and helps get rid of the aftertaste that tends to bother people about sugar cane juice (although i never minded it).
It was 7 pm, we ended our journey and started heading home, satisfied. I think we paced ourselves well and thus did not completely stuff ourselves (Mattatouille apparently could still handle two Double-Doubles).


Nuoc Mia Vien Tay
14370 Brookhurst St
Garden Grove, CA 92843
(714) 531-9801