One of the most challenging aspects of The Elephant Walk experience for me has been the issue of authenticity. The question is raised from time to time: "Are we really Cambodian restaurants?", or more to the point: "Is our Cambodian food really Cambodian?" Sometimes customers ask us in the restaurants and sometimes we see the questions asked (and sometimes the charges leveled) on the high-profile online opinion forums such as CitySearch and Amazon and the more free-form message boards such as ChowHound. The Elephant Walk has never been easy to describe to people. We serve both Cambodian and French Cuisine - not "fusion" cuisine; our French and Cambodian menus have always been separate and distinct. In the very beginning we served exclusively traditional dishes from each culture. Our first French menus, for example, featured French onion soup, Coq au Vin, Duck à l'Orange, Steak au Poivre and so forth. After 6 months or so of experience with customers and critics (most of whom were recommending the customers elect to eat Cambodian over French) we rethought the original assumption that we would be more interesting to people if we served the "classics." Nyep, joined by Nadsa in late 1992, began to innovate and express her creativity - on the French side of the menu. We all had more fun and our customers seemed both more interested in and to enjoy the French menu much more than before. Then came a seminal conversation between Nyep and me... One December day, feeling the need to freshen the menu, Nyep confided in me her concern that she would eventually run out of traditional Khmer dishes that customers would like. We had changed our menu 3 or 4 times over the previous 16 months and were figuring out what "worked" and what didn't - that is, what people liked and would lick off their plates, and what they would send back to the kitchen. "What should I do?," she asked. I thought for a while and launched into a soliloquy that would change our course forever. My thoughts streamed more or less in this direction: One of the reasons we decided to serve French cuisine in that dear but difficult old basement space in Union Square, and not just Cambodian, was to broaden our appeal. I desperately wanted to avoid being pigeon-holed as another cute little Asian hole-in-the-wall, an unfortunate, limiting fate I felt befall many good ethnic restaurants. We were to be the first Cambodian restaurant in the Greater Boston areas wanted to be taken seriously. We were also opening in the depths of the last recession and, risking everything we had to our names, our restaurant simply HAD to make it. I thought a lot about what we might do a little differently from the average restaurant to gain an edge, to stand out from the crowd. While we were crafting the concept of The Elephant Walk I suggested to Nyep that she consider serving French cuisine too. After all, I knew she had the talent and skill. Not only had she lived for the past 13 years in France but she had grown up under the French Protectorate in Cambodia and had in fact lived her entire life to date profoundly influenced by French culture - including its cuisine. The fact was, I argued, a restaurant that was both Cambodian AND French restaurant would be an authentic expression of her family's life experience that people would find intriguing. As you can see - and I will take responsibility for this... - the "best interests of the business" began influencing our choices at an early stage in our development. While we have raised questions about our authenticity as a consequence of some of our decisions, our business clearly benefited, telling us that, for the most part, our customers approved. Two out of three of our customers (now as then) order Cambodian food but I have long maintained that the secret to our mainstream success was, in fact, our French food. For one thing, it makes us "veto-proof" for a larger group with one or more less adventuresome souls who either "don't like spicy food" or "prefer simpler things." Since we do offer a French-style steak or roasted chicken, etc. that suits the taste of the person with a Continental palate, the rest of the group can come for the less familiar Cambodian food. - But there's always been more to it than that... I risk igniting a firestorm here but I feel I must be honest: Clearly less of an issue now in the early 21st century, there has long been a bias toward Continental cuisines as being somehow more serious or more gourmet than an Asian cuisine (if you've ever eaten at Nobu in Tribeca you know those days are at least numbered, if not a memory!) - that if one cooked Italian food, one was a chef; Chinese? One was a cook. Ergo, if one cooks French food, one is a chef; Cambodian? One is a cook. So, my thinking went: If Nyep were to cook French food then she would be more quickly and easily recognized and accepted as a chef...and that would make her Cambodian food REALLY good, right? - I do think that our restaurant, and particularly her food, was taken more seriously than most Asian cuisines when we appeared on the restaurant scene in the early 90s and while I don't claim to know for sure, I have always believed this was a compelling, albeit unfortunate, reason. In addition to French food helping us to be taken more seriously, a French menu gave us permission to publish a strong wine list - something we do to this day - and to serve Western-style desserts, all of which have been crucial to our ability to offer a more complete dining experience to a Western clientele. While we sometimes serve Cambodian desserts, quite frankly, our customers have told us they MUCH prefer a flan or a flourless chocolate cake or a fruit tart to the sticky black rice with shaved young fresh coconut or fingerling bananas in a coconut milk tapioca or a buttercup squash filled with a coconut milk custard - several of the wonderful Cambodian desserts we've served over the years. People would order them out of a sense of adventure, or duty perhaps, but the many unfinished plates and luke-warm feedback told us the average Westerner doesn't really appreciate a Cambodian dessert. It's simply not to their taste. Finally, we return to the differences in expectations - less today than 10 years ago and beyond, certainly - we the public have of continental vs. "ethnic" restaurants. I freely admit to the succumbing to this same bias myself: I KNOW most of the readers of this piece expect most Chinese or Japanese or Thai or Vietnamese or Indian or Mexican restaurants to have a large percentage of their menu items in common with other restaurants representing the same culture. At the same time, I fully expect two French restaurants to offer menus that are completely different from one another! Why is that?! This is the root of the Continental chef -vs- Asian cook bias; that COOKS are expected to recreate something well known and familiar whereas CHEFS are expected to create something new and different. Acknowledging this "truth" was the key that truly set us free... Being French, we were free to innovate! That cold December night over a decade ago I asked Nyep: "Why don't you create NEW Cambodian food? Who makes the rules anyway? Who says Cambodian food has stopped evolving and that there can be no new dishes? And if it CAN evolve, who decides who gets to create the new Cambodian cuisine? Who knows Cambodian food, traditional cooking techniques and ingredients better than you? If you are afraid of running out of traditional dishes that our customers will love, why not invent new ones?" - Two weeks later: Poulet Dhomrei was born, the first "original" Cambodian dish ever to come out of The Elephant Walk kitchen, and to this day a passionate favorite, along with our vegetarian version made with tofu instead of chicken. And since then, there have been many, many more, as Nyep and Nadsa established a "tradition of innovation" at The Elephant Walk, creating new Cambodian food using traditional techniques and ingredients, exercising their rights as chefs to help their culture's culinary art to grow and develop further. - We have been thinking lately we might clarify how we describe our food and refer to it as "Living Cambodian Cuisine." Many, many Cambodians have eaten at The Elephant Walk and Carambola over the 11½ years or so we've been in business. The vast majority have in some way expressed great happiness and pride something along the lines of "FINALLY there is a restaurant that shows the world how wonderful our food is, that it is as delicious and beautiful as any other cuisine. I have been telling people for years but now I can show them." But there have been those who have complained that we "aren't really serving true Cambodian cuisine; these aren't the dishes I know; we never ate these things in my family." To some extent, they are right. About half of the Cambodian dishes on each of our restaurant menus are traditional, but the rest are original, created by Nadsa and Nyep - obviously new to our Western clientele, even our Cambodian guests couldn't possibly have tasted them before. Also noteworthy, of the traditional dishes we serve, many are aristocratic and royal Cambodian cuisine. Nyep and Kenthao were each born into upper class families; Kenthao (and Nadsa, too) is a distant cousin of the King. Growing up, Nyep learned from her mother many dishes served in the Royal Palace (our Nataing is a favorite of King Sihanouk) and many others from the embassy cooks that were a part of her and her husband's diplomatic entourage (Nyep's husband, Kenthao was Cambodia's ambassador to Taiwan when Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge, triggering the family's exile in France). This was not everyday fare. Much of the food we serve truly is (and was) rare and, thus, unfamiliar. But it is most definitely authentically Cambodian. That said, there are many distinctive flavors in Cambodian cooking that define the culture's cuisine - among them lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime (and it's leaves), fish sauce, shrimp paste, and especially prahok (this month's Ingredient of the Month), an incredibly powerful fermented fish paste not for the faint of heart! While we continue to serve some dishes that feature prahok, many of the strongest ones that we have served in the past generated so many complaints and created so many UNhappy customers that WE, I must confess, have become faint-of-heart and are reluctant to offer them. - In the early days of The Elephant Walk we were stubborn and felt it was our duty to represent even the most extreme traditional flavors. After fielding an inordinate number of complaints and issuing refunds on a certain subset of dishes, we finally decided to "red circle" and list them under a new section on our menus we called "Challenging Flavors." I remember being so proud of that. I even used the phrase "not for the faint-of-heart" and closed my description of the menu section with "Caveat Emptor!" It didn't work. (I've always admired how Chris Schlesinger was able to serve "Pasta from Hell" or the "Martini from Hell" and host his perennial tradition: "Hotter than Hell Night!" Alas, prahok just ain't the same thing, I guess...) We WARNED people that they might not like the dishes and still people ordered them (a good thing) and STILL they sent them back... The overwhelming majority of customers who did so were Westerners, but of course the vast majority of ALL of our customers are Westerners... So, we lamented... NOW what do we do? We've spent the past few years dancing around this dilemma and I think we're gearing up for fresh attempt to share more of those Challenging Flavors (and aromas!) from the Cambodian culinary palate. In the coming months we will be offering tasting menus that will highlight the dishes currently on our menu that are traditional -vs- original. And prahok, kapik (shrimp paste) and other Challenging Flavors are destined to be featured more prominently than in recent years. We simply have to find a way to better prepare people for what they are about to experience and to deal well with our fear of rejection of those dishes by customers who find them outside their comfort zone, essential flavors that define comfort food for Cambodians. - As you know, we are running a series of special dinners highlighting Undiscovered Asian Cuisines. I am tempted to try to fit US into that series and focus our special menu on the Challenging Flavors in Traditional Cambodian cuisine. What thinkest thou? Is The Elephant Walk really authentic? Absolutely. For nearly 12 years the dining public in Greater Boston has been enjoying what I honestly believe is the best Cambodian food in the world - traditional and original, everyday and aristocratic. Nyep and Nadsa are extraordinarily knowledgeable (how many people do YOU know who have been citizens of THREE countries in their lifetimes?) and talented chefs who not only accurately recreate traditional preparations from their native land but also embrace the challenge of artistic license to interpret and create - in both Cambodian AND French disciplines! The Elephant Walk and Carambola are indeed authentic, honest manifestations of the rich cultural, culinary and whole-life experiences of the De Monteiro family. Quoted from: Bob Perry President and Founding Partner The Elephant Walk Restaurant Group

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