Banh trang nuong da lat yelled the sign in front of me. But it was not the funny Vietnamese name that grabbed me, it was the disco lights of the very energetic food truck. I’ll add that seeing said Vietnamese writing was extra exciting as I was trolling for the Royal Palace to the Riverside in Phnom Penh.
To read about hanging by the riverside click here
Banh trang nuong da lat (which I can read had some Khmer underneath it, which I could not read and the 3000 – 1. That means 75 cents for one. So not reading Vietnamese, I was to reply on a loose Khmer Translation.
“បាញ់ត្រាងអាំង”, or Banh Trang.
“what does it mean said I”, “its just the same as the Vietnamese name”. Ask a stupid question, get a silly answer.
From my limited knowledge of Vietnamese, I knew that banh meant bread. That was enough for Me.
What is banh trang nuong da lat?
As I looked into the food truck I saw a kind of bread/rice paper being burned o over a fire. It was then being wrapped with a ton of very eclectic ingredients then being wrapped inside. It looked interesting to say the least.
Ingredients of a banh trang nuong da lat
I went for the full monty, as in everything whacked inside. These included sweetcorn, sausage, spring onion, mayonnaise, chicken/pork and then wrapped around the rice cake. It then gets wrapped around the in the now fairly told rice cake.
It looked quite a bit like a burrito, yep a Khmer/Vietnamese rice cake burrito.
It really is no secret that there is not a lot of love lost between your average Cambodian and the Vietnamese (despite being liberated), but when it comes to food they are a lot more liberal with sharing things. The Khmer might claim it, but Lok Lak anyone?
To read about the Vietnamese liberation of Cambodia click here .
To read about Lok Lak lick here .
And how does the darned thing taste?
I took it home and went straight into devouring it. This was to me a very signature Vietnamese style dish, banh trang nuong da lat is very much Vietnamese fusion cuisine. Local ingredients, but with a slight western/French twang to it.
A bit like a burrito as I previously mentioned, not too spicy, and not big enough to fill you (or at least me up).
“បាញ់ត្រាងអាំង”, or Banh Trang Grill .
So, to briefly ignore the Vietnamese influence here, and just to call it “បាញ់ត្រាងអាំង”,/ Banh Trang, I was curious to see just how popular it is. Apparently it is a mostly a Phnom Penh thing, largely influenced by the former big Vietnamese pre presence here, you won’t find it in the Kampuchean boonies.
I have to say one of the best thing about the Street Food Guy is getting to try new stuff, this was definitely new stuff for me. Did it rock my world? Not so much, but បាញ់ត្រាងអាំង, Banh Trang, or banh trang nuong da lat was another Khmer/Vietnamese street food success.
