Crazy Cambodian Street Food

Cambodian street food is unique and surprisingly delicious. From Phnom Penh to Siem Reap you will come across street food that you would never have seen before, let alone taste.

When I was deciding whether to dive into this culinary adventure, I asked myself 'will I get the opportunity to try these foods again'. Probably not, so I opened my taste buds to this new experience. I was slightly worried about the food foreign to my stomach but I didn't get sick.

Some of these unique foods entered the Cambodian diet out of necessity. The famine brought about by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s made people eat any living creature they could catch. Some of the creatures tasted good, so they remained in their diet after the famine ended.

In Siem Reap, the largest and most authentic street food can be found at Phsar Leu (meaning 'Old Market'). It is located about 3km from the centre. The food is very cheap but very little English is spoken.

1. Tarantula

Travelling by bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap, we stopped in Skuon (aka 'Spiderville'). There were hundreds of fried tarantulas to choose from. The appearance of the tarantula makes it very challenging to eat.

I started by picking off the hairy legs from the body. It tasted better than it looked and was similar to crispy chicken. Once all the legs were gone, I had the confidence to bite into the body where there were grey eggs with potato-like texture. It was a bad idea to look at it. The hardest and final part was the crunchy head.

Locals consider them as a 'tasty snack' and sell for between 50 cents to $1 dollar. The spiders are rich in protein, folic acid and zinc, and are believed to have medicinal properties.

The locals capture tarantulas from the jungle by putting their bare hands down tarantula's burrows. The fangs are removed and locals sometimes shock tourists by putting live tarantulas on their bodies and in their mouths. The cooking process involved rubbing them with salt and herbs before putting them in hot oil.

After eating a tarantula, I felt like other weird food would be much easier.

2. Frog

The frog was small, juicy, tender and tasted similar to chicken. The frog's skin is removed before cooking. At barbeque carts, sometimes you will see larger frogs on skewers.

3. Crickets

The crickets are deep fried with chillies, spring onions, garlic and peanuts. This was my favourite as it was tender crispy and salty. Locals snack on grasshoppers like bags of chips.

4. Water Snake

The snakes are fried with sugar and salt. Some are served on skewers. However, the snake given to me was coiled up into a ball like a tangled rope. 

They are very long and have plenty of meat on it. It was difficult to tear with my hands. The skin is hard to chew and the inside is juicy. It tasted like rubbery chicken. Out of all the street food I tried, this was my least favourite. 

5. Fermented Fish Sauce, Beef Intestines & Red Ants

Prahok is a crushed, salted and fermented fish paste (mudfish). The paste is dried in the sun for a day then put into jars with salt and left for 3 weeks.

It is very salty and has a strong taste. It is added to many Cambodian meals. It tastes better than it smells and it has earned the nickname of 'Cambodian Cheese'.

I was given a sauce that included fermented fish sauce, red ants and chilli peppers. Red ants add sourness to salty dishes. I dipped the white beef intestines into this sauce, took a moutful and grimaced as I waited for my taste buds to react. However, the flavours complemented each other better than I had expected.

Would you eat like a local?