Apsara Palace

Apsara Palace
783B Hope Street
Providence, RI 02906
401.831.4722

It's hard to walk down Hope Street on the East Side of Providence without getting hungry. Just a few blocks from Not Just Snacks and Ivy Tavern is Apsara Palace, a pan Asian restaurant which serves up Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai, and Chinese cuisine. As you can imagine, covering cuisine from such a vast area of the world requires a hearty, expansive menu.

After having lived in Thailand and eaten my way through Southeast Asia during a year long fellowship, one of the things I most miss back at home is the food of the region. I crave the juicy mangoes, spicy curries, and peanuty dishes I'd eaten at street side markets. I'm often hard pressed to find a Thai restaurant able to capture those uniquely tangy flavors.

So when I arrived at Apsara Palace on a bustling Saturday night, I didn't have the heart to leaf through the pages and pages of rice and noodle dishes. Bracing myself in advance to be disappointed, I ordered the hard-to-ruin and unimaginative staple of American Southeast Asian cuisine-Pad Thai. In Thailand Pad Thai is often sold by vendors on the street in a giant metal wok that quickly cooks multiple helpings in one batch. Vendors have an array of condiments so you can make the noodles your own-hot sauce, fish sauce, peanuts, and lime help with the customization. While the dish is enjoyed as a snack or a meal by Thais, it is not by any means viewed as the nation's signature dish.

But Apsara Palace's delicious sweet, sour, and salty Pad Thai may just have renewed my faith in American Thai restaurants. Squeezing the lime over my noodles generously covered in chopped peanuts brought back memories of crowded streets abuzz with activity-motorbikes whizzing by, late night street vendors hawking fruit, and friends gossiping over steaming bowls of soup after a long day. I hope on my next visit to Apsara Palace I'll be brave enough to really explore their vast menu.

Angkor Restaurant

Angkor Restaurant

333 Wickenden St

Providence, RI 02903

(401) 383-2227

On the East Side of Providence, a fold-out sign on Wickenden Street promises a passer-byer, "Authentic Cambodian Cuisine" at Angkor Restaurant.  Though I've walked by the sign numerous times, I'd never stopped-mostly because I wasn't sure what I'd find inside.  Unlike Cambodia's neighbors, Thailand and Vietnam, many Americans do not associate this Southeast Asian nation with distinctive and flavorful curries, rice dishes, and soups.  Instead its contemporary history of genocide overshadows a rich culture and heritage.

But thanks to friendly owner Chutema, diners at Angkor Restaurant are able to experience the many layers of history that shape Cambodia today, from Hindu and Buddhist art which adorns the walls (inspired by images found on temples of the ancient Khmer empire, the restaurant's namesake), to stories that capture the realities of the Killing Fields.  Chutema and his family, like many Cambodians in the 1970s-1980s, were resettled in Rhode Island after escaping Pol Pot's regime.  Luckily, their culture and recipes also escaped cultural annihilation by the Khmer Rouge, brought to America by Chutema's late mother-in-law, Bopha Kem.  Before escaping Cambodia, Bopha Kem recorded her aunt's recipes from when she worked in the kitchen of a royal palace in Northwest Cambodia.  Today these recipes serve as the foundation for Angkor's food, though Chutema has adapted the menu to meet the tastes of the Brown and RISD students and faculty who frequent the restaurant.  Chutema leaves the kitchen often to talk to diners and share his family's story- though he makes sure not to share the secrets behind his tasty dishes, which Johnson & Wales student have tried unsuccessfully to get out of him.

Based on Chutema's recommendation, I started with Angkor's signature dish, Medicine Soup, or Nam Yaa, which he described as "chicken soup on stereoids."  This perfectly spicy noodle soup is touted for its delicious healing power, relying on a combination of herbs, lemon grass, ginger, galangal, garlic, karffir, limeleaves, chicken and shrimp for its unique flavor.  Luckily I brought along an equally enthusiastic dining partner to help me try two more dishes, including fresh spring rolls and an overflowing platter of Banh Hoi, a Vietnamese put-it-together-yourself-dish of rice noodles, fresh lettuce, mint cucumbers, tofu and vegetables, bean sprouts and peanut dipping sauce.  After scrapping our plates clean, we left Angkor with a new appreciation of the cultural power of recipes and the spices of Southeast Asia.