Phnom Penh Restaurant Reviews: Yi Xan

Yi Xan seemed positively gilded in comparison with the cozy but spartan and utilitarian Chinese cafes with their ramshackle, mismatched tables and chairs we usually dine in. Instead we found a Monivong food factory decorated in sterile, high-ceilinged, ersatz Imperial manner, with faux marble pillars and red lacquering here, there and everywhere.

For a big man, Frank Rizzo sure can move and he would have beaten Usain Bolt to that last table in a virtually packed out restaurant this Saturday night. Our fellow diners (with no white middle aged men wearing age inappropriate outfits in sight) were about a hundred wealthy Chinese Khmers, purring away and clearly enjoying the communal human contact as much as the food.

Having been generously seated next to the door, a beady – eyed waiter appeared approximately 22 seconds later bearing menus and then began to patrol our table, buzzing away in the background, his chivvying for us to order being tacit but nonetheless relentless. Rizzo brushed him away and we spent a while staring long and hard at the menus, feeling baffled and bemused with descriptions, which even by Chinese standards, were both cryptic and vague. We discussed ordering ‘the bean products of the imitative chicken,’ and ‘hot and sour and small crisp taste.’ Then there was ‘the tongue of the pig of the sauce,’ and next to it, the ‘small fragrant frailty.’

In the end and as ever, I allowed Rizzo to order and then settled down to chew the fat with him over a large jug of crisp Anchor beer. We chatted about the ever rising cost of living in Phnom Penh (these days at the supermarket I can afford a large bottle of imported American mayonnaise or a decent mature Aussie cheddar, but not both). Then conversation moved onto that surreal woman who dubs all the female voices on Khmer TV and we decided that she must be sucking helium to keep her voice so absurdly shrill and high pitched. Finally we decided that the toilets at Dream Bar, being clean, private and lavishly equipped, are absolutely the best for anybody caught short with a sudden and unexpected case of the trots in that part of town.

Our chat was interrupted when a sweet young Chinese girl with a spotty complexion arrived with the first two dishes and we began to tuck in.

First, we had ‘The Pepper and Beefs of the Green’ ($4.00) which consisted of a generous fistful of green peppercorn berries – the ones with the anesthetic properties that numb the tongue – sitting atop chunks of beef offal that had been braised for a long time in sugar and soy. All this came served in a dark, sweet sauce and the offal factor made this a distinctly blue collar dish, but it was flavorsome despite that fact.

Next came ‘Stir fried (pork) meat a round mass’ ($4.00) and this one was a real curio. Floating in a dense sweet liquor were four snowball sized lumps of lukewarm minced pork, perhaps a touch pink and undercooked in the middle (never a good thing with pork). This dish also suffered because of the fattiness of the meat and a far leaner cut would have been preferable.

Looking up from my food, I’d earlier noticed that Rizzo looked like he was finding the food about as arousing as a night spent indoors watching Animal Planet with Sam Campbell.

A few mouthfuls later I checked again and Rizzo now had what could only be described as a sucking-shit-through-a-straw look about his face and seemed to be experiencing what the French call a mauvais quart d’heure. In fact, the last time I’d seen a similar facial expression was when gavinmac had been whupped at a game of Connect 4 by a bargirl in Pitstop.

Things perked up a little when the next course ‘Steamed Shun-Hut Fish’ ($6.50) arrived. This delicate fish, which had been scooped alive from its tank within eyesight after being ordered, was new to me. It came served beneath the usual array of lawn clipping style crisp shredded veg, yet its flavor was enticingly subtle with a light and ethereal tang.

But with Rizzo poking disconsolately at his plate and failing to become enlivened by two large jugs of crisp Anchor draft ($2.50 each), we decided to call it quits. In any case, he was by now so catatonic that I doubt he’d have noticed if the waiter had delivered him a flying kung fu kick to the head rather than a complimentary plate of chilled watermelon. And so he wandered out again, into the wet neon shadows of rainy season Monivong, wearing the pained expression of a man who’d been made to schlep halfway across town for some fairly mediocre food.

Steamed Sun-Hut fish : $6.50
Stir fried (pork) meat a round mass : $4.00
The Pepper and Beefs of the Green : $4.00
Stir Fried Garlic of Greens Vegetable $2.00
Angkor (Jug) $2.50 (x2)
Total = a not larcenous $20

Yi Xian – Monivong (inbetween Sihanouk and Mao Tse Tung)

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