This one time, in Battambang, I did a cookery class. The enthusiastic chef and owner of the unusually named (but not dodgy at all, honest) ‘Smoking Pot’ restaurant took us on an amazing (and pungent) fresh market tour, around stalls of vibrant vegetables and flying fish heads, to buy the ingredients for a couple of speciality Khmer dishes which we went back to cook – and lived to tell the tale. Armed with the knowledge of how much I’d enjoyed that day and the experience of that whole trip, my best friend surprised me with a birthday meal at what claims to be the only Cambodian restaurant in London, and indeed the UK.
Lemongrass reminded me a bit of Mandalay, in that it is a relatively unusual cuisine (Cambodian and Burmese), but a lot of the ingredients and flavours were familiar to me. Both restaurants are also very small, and the quiet, intimate atmosphere is one I love, and one that is becoming more and more rare in London.
After sharing some very tasty mixed starters, quite a few of us ordered the ‘fish amok’, to great acclaim! With a hint of spice and very tender, boneless fish, it was absolutely delicious.
Empty restaurant for a Thursday night. Kathleen our waitress was adorable. The veg sharing starter divine. It contained an amazing mushroom starter which turned out was drowned in this Maggie sauce. The Mango salad was wonderfully tasty.
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