Food is a survival need to everyone of us. In this case, I am studying about the traditional food in Cambodia. Our goals are to find and tell stories of people who make traditional foods in Cambodia and to discover and share how food impacts each individual family, society and culture. In order to complete our goals, we have to go to many places. We were trying to reach out to many restaurants in Siem Reap as well as Phnom Penh to gather stories.
We first took a trip to Tady Chroy Ampil restaurant to interview the owner how do they manage their business, their services, their feeling that related to foods. We also interview some customers about how do they feel about the restaurant services and how the food is like. We didn’t forget about the chefs because they play an important role in the restaurant as well as exploring their kitchen. That was a pre-trip to practice the skills of taking pictures, taking video and especially interviewing to get good stories. We did the same thing when we visited the three restaurant in Siem Reap such as Mahob Khmer Cuisine, Cuisine Wat Damnak and The Sugar Palm, but along the way and during the trip we also visited some local market and local people too. We did go to Skun Market, Bamboo sticky rice shop, Kraom Market, Khmer rice noodle production and Night market. After we come back to Liger, we decided to go to another local market in Kandal which is Ta Kmao night market. We have put together some stories, photo essays, videos in a blog not just about foods, but how people feels about it and their memories.
Interestingly, we found two different definitions between Khmer food and cambodian food from different different people. From Khmer chef’s perspective, there are no differences between Khmer food and cambodian food. Instead, from a french chef’s perspective name Joannès Rivière, the owner Cuisine Wat Damnak, said “Cambodia food and Khmer food is different. Cambodia food is some kind of food that influenced by other countries but has been eaten in Cambodia a long time ago. For Khmer food is foods or recipe that created by ancestors in this country.”. In my opinion, there is no differences between these two thing.
