THE DISH of silky slices of lime-cured salmon looks like a platter of crudo, the trendy Italian-style raw fish. But the flavors are pure Cambodian -- Asian fish sauce punctuated by the sharp citrus jolt of shredded kaffir lime leaf, perfumed with a wild assortment of fresh leafy herbs.
You'd never know it from the scarcity of Cambodian restaurants, but L.A. is home to the largest expatriate community outside Cambodia. Still, Cambodian cuisine and restaurants serving it remain largely undiscovered.
But Kansas transplant Kaylene Men hopes to change that at her new restaurant, Golden Villa, in the Cambodia Town district of Long Beach.
She loves to show off the restaurant's salmon salad. Men is convinced that dishes such as this one -- with their proximity to the flavors of Thai and Vietnamese food -- will be an ambassador for the cuisine of her native country.
One reason we've seen so few such spots is the absence of a restaurant ownership tradition among Cambodians. Here and in the homeland, most restaurants are Chinese-owned. They double as banquet halls for weddings and other festivities. Not only are they often closed to the general public on weekends, but their Cambodian dishes, scattered throughout the largely Chinese menus, are also frustratingly unidentified in English.
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Evolving dishes
But AFTER almost three decades of radical cultural adjustments among Cambodian Americans, we are starting to see a few welcome changes among the neighborhood's restaurants. At the moment, Golden Villa's plan is the most ambitious.
The restaurant's evolving direction is the handiwork of Men and her partner, Sophy Khut, longtime proprietor of the well-loved Sophy's Cambodian and Thai restaurant nearby. They've hired chef Lim Kim, who for eight years ran her own pan-Asian restaurant, Park Cafe, in the Boston Visitor's Center. Kim's brilliant talent for improvising with Cambodian ingredients is evident in the collection of avant-garde and traditional salads she has developed.
Minty, floral and bitter nuances weave their way into her inventive plates. Her flavor combinations are carefully calibrated and balanced. A julienned green mango salad with crunchy deep-fried catfish chunks is accented with minuscule dried shrimp for crunch; raw-cured shrimp tossed with slivered red pepper, bean sprouts and water spinach (known in Chinese as ong choy) comes scattered with a mince of roasted peanuts.
