Cambodia's Rat Restaurants Brace For Seasonal Boom

[george]

Cambodia's rat restaurants brace for seasonal boom

CAMBODIA: -- For most restaurants, rats are bad news. But in the Cambodian province of Battambang, the arrival of this seasonal rodent delicacy signals big business.

Battambang, 300 km northwest of Phnom Penh, is the rice bowl of the nation. And with rice comes rats - grain-fattened paddy rats that connoisseurs say are delicious barbecued, boiled or roasted in a heady mixture of lemongrass, turmeric and garlic.

'The last rice has just been harvested, so the rats are ready. They are coming onto the market now, and the next three months while they are in season are very good business for us,' says restaurateur Chhrut Hen, 24.

Hen's family owns two candle-lit street restaurants in a busy late night snack strip opposite Battambang Referral Hospital. For months, customers have to be content with a mundane tapas of dried stingray, fish and squid to sip their wine and beer with. But rat meat, she says, is what really brings business flocking.

'We can make an extra $200 when rat is in season,' Hen says. Only paddy rat and never city rat is served, she stresses.

Some say rat meat became a delicacy in the years of deprivation under Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime, and many Cambodians still recoil at the thought of eating the rodent.

However, vendors say those who have developed a taste for it span all social classes, and their appetite is insatiable. Hen's restaurant alone sells at least two kilos of rat meat each night.

'We usually serve them barbecued, but at home I prefer them in a tom yum style soup,' says Hen's sister, Chhrut Him, 16.

Him says she first became a fan of rat meat in her home province of Kampong Cham, 200 km to the east, but the meat of Battambang rats is sweeter because the rice is harvested just once a year here and Battambang's highly sought-after fragrant rice makes the rodents fatter and more flavoursome.

At the nearby upmarket 100 Rice Fields Garden restaurant, Srey Mom is also gearing up for a rat season rush. Here patrons sit in individual thatched huts, and instead of rice wine, the drink of choice is often imported beer or even whisky. But rice paddy rat, she says, still makes a perfect accompaniment to any tipple.

'The early season rats are more expensive and a little thin - they don't have as much meat on them yet, but people still buy because they have missed their taste,' she says.

Rat meat connoisseur Hoy says he became a fan of the food because it was cheap, at between 10 and 40 cents per animal, and a very social snack for sharing between friends over a drink.

'It tastes like any other meat. I don't think about it as rat,' he says.

For Choy Roeun, another candlelight snack strip vendor, the beginning of the brief rat meat season signals a boom in business that keeps her restaurant in the black throughout the leaner times of the year.

'Rat meat is not just for the rich or the poor. Everyone enjoys it, no matter what their drink or job,' she says.

But she would beg to disagree with the popular assumption of foreigners that all exotic meats taste a little bit like chicken. 'Oh no,' she says. 'I would say rat tastes much more like snake.'

--CalcuttaNews.net 2007-01-11

[ColPyat]

Field rats are also eaten in Thailand after harvest season.

And they are a delicacy indeed. I prefer them roasted over a small fire, loosely wrapped in banana leaves. Delicious!

[chownah]

In the north people eat rat sometimes but it is not preferred by most people. When I first moved here people were intrigued that I ate all of the northern food with the exception of some stuff that was too spicey...so one of them asked me if I would eat a rat.......I said that I would if someone cooked it and offered to share a meal with me.....about 6 months later I got invited to a dinner of barbecued rat.....it was edible but very oily and gamey tasting.....I don't prefer it either and certainly wouldn't pay to eat it but if rat was all there was to eat then I could survive on it and in the process, who knows...I might acquire a taste for it.

Chownah

[Pattaya_Fox]

Almost ready for the pot!

[farangsay]

Almost ready for the pot!

As a globally recognized expert on all things

with legs and some things without I was

immediately able to identify the

creatures in your photo as specimins of

the skinless horny rat genus.

So called for the absence of the usual

furry hide (for the other bit just study

closely the specimen in the middle of

your photograph).

Long thought extinct , the discovery of

a veritable colony in the kitchen of a

five star Bangkok hotel resulted in them

being placed on the endangered species

list.

You sir would have better contacted the

relevant UN agency rather than further

encourage the despicable trade in

"exotic delicacies"

[PhilHarries]

But she would beg to disagree with the popular assumption of foreigners that all exotic meats taste a little bit like chicken. 'Oh no,' she says. 'I would say rat tastes much more like snake.'

--CalcuttaNews.net 2007-01-11

Glad she cleared that up, but what kind of snake is she referring to? Cobra is undoubtably the best but a bit hard to come by these days. Common python has an unpleasant muddy flavour and the meat of a sidewinder is, IMO, a bit on the dry side.

No doubt it'll appear on the menus of those posh London restaurants that like to indulge in cross cultural cuisine.

[kmart]

Reminds me of the Monty Python film where the vendor in the crowd (at a stoning) is selling "rats on a stick"

Cambodia has some wonderfully exotic cuisine. Grilled tarantulas were al the rage a few years ago.

spiderlicious

[Laulen]

Horrible! Thank goodness I am a vegetarian!

[ColPyat]

Horrible! Thank goodness I am a vegetarian!

Good, only more for us.

Have fun grazing.