Mouthful

What in the world are you eating?

Mince.

27 May 2009 | 11:47 - By Phil Lees

What is the least culturally specific food that is not a staple like bread or rice?


These are the sort of questions that plague me. Of course, calling bread or rice a staple without elaborating ignores variations within those staples, which do become specific to certain region and even towns. It's a little ludicrous to compare the long slender strands of basmati rice with the starchy stubbiness of arborio rice; or the foamy pancakes of injera to a leaden pumpernickel. I also think that it is fair to rule out essential commodities like salt.

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 Ottoman Empire street food as examined through the medium of hip hop


Any street food that has been covered by a best-selling hip hop artist is worth your attention. The rapper in question in this youtube clip is Slovenian and dropping rhymes about a savoury pastry remnant of the Ottoman Empire really does seal the deal for me. Norway can keep their Eurovision win.

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Budget Eating

13 May 2009 | 9:04 - By Phil Lees

There is a small hope the Federal Budget will change the way that we eat.


Yes, it’s the one day of the year where journalists whom are otherwise disconnected from fiscal policy are legally obliged to slip the word “hip pocket” into every single article that they produce. My work here is done. So how will the budget affect food?

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By the Book

06 May 2009 | 21:11 - By Phil Lees

Earlier, I berated backpackers as being the cause of the spread of banana pancakes; the bland bellwether of future culinary doom. What if it was the travel guidebooks driving the change?


Guidebooks are a crutch for the food-obsessed traveler.

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About this Blog

A blog about what the world eats, when and where it eats it, and why it matters to us all. Only much less ambitious than that sounds and with more excruciating puns.

Phil Lees grew up in rural Victoria, the first generation in his family to not have lived on the farm and thereby not slaughter their own meat.

In 2005 he moved to Cambodia and started the nation’s first food blog, Phnomenon.com, named after the best pun that he has ever made. It turns out that Cambodian food is delicious and unlike the warnings in most guidebooks, is not likely to kill you with any immediacy. Gridskipper called him a “national treasure”. Lonely Planet’s Greater Mekong guide called him “the unofficial pimp of Cambodian cuisine”. The New York Times laughed at a funny hotdog he saw.

Phil makes a mean sausage, a hoppy pale ale, a modest laksa. He owns three barbecues and is in the market for a fourth.

 
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