After nearly three weeks, the PELUKA sisterhood met today for a day of coffee, food, and more coffee! Tee-hee-hee. This time we have a new PELUKA member with us and already had her first taste of PELUKA sisters day out.
We started our day with coffee at Gloria Jeans coffee shop in Boeungkengkang. Day outs like this with my friends make me feel so thankful for the great bonds we have all established. Now that we have a new "member", we all can't wait to hang out with her as soon as she and her family moves to the Penh later this year. Over coffee, we talked animatedly, giggled like teenagers while at the same time debating where to go for lunch.
In the end, we went to
Champs-Élysées Restaurant along Trasak Paem St. (St. 63).
PinayWife,
Mumsified,
PinayMum, and
My Furry Place have dined at
Champs-Élysées many times already and can attest to the yummy-ness of the Chinese food that is the specialty there. So I had this “surprise me” kind of mood that day and left it up to them the task of ordering our lunch.
The food came one by one… they were all so delish... but for me, this is clearly the winner:
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Deep-fried soft-shell crabs, a delicacy in Cambodia. |
This is a very tasty Chinese specialty that is popular around the world. It is so crispy served with fried garlic bits and the usual soy-garlic-chilli dipping to complete the deal. You can literally eat everything – as in you can eat them all of the crabs – and it is very difficult to stay away from. You will want to reach out for more. Soft-shell crabs, by the way, are blue crabs in their molting (shedding) stage, when crabs shed their shells to become the much sought-after and highly-prized restaurant favourite. In the Bisaya-Hiligaynon language, we call soft-shell crabs, or any other soft-shelled crustaceans like shrimps, as luno.
Who would ever thought... that a restaurant with a French name serves one of the best Khmer and Chinese dishes I've ever had... where else but only in Phnom Penh! Definitely worth coming back to with my husband.