Category: Glossary

Boy, Kampuchea Noodle Bar is really getting their money's worth from their PR. But before all the food writers 'round town start disseminating misinformation, I need a little clarification. I was always under the impression that pho was a Vietnamese thing. But I'm hoping that Cambodian noodle soup, like Thai noodle soup, is a wholly different animal from pho. So just as I wouldn't say baguette instead of bagel, I don't think we should be calling Cambodian noodles pho. And yes, I am one uptight stick-in-the-mud nerd.

I called Kampuchea Noodle Bar to clarify and got this e-mail:

"Pho is primarily Vietnamese. Our restaurant serves Southeast Asian food but focuses on Cambodian cuisine the most. The dish similar to Pho would be Ka Tech for Cambodia.
We hope you check us out!"

UPDATED: I also called the restaurant's PR contact (which I got from the website. My bad. From the press release:

"Kampuchea’s menu is divided into six sections, and the Noodle Soups (Pho), Cold Noodles and Stews are Chau's specialty."

Weird that a place called "Kampuchea Noodle Bar" would use the Vietnamese name for their noodle soups. But I'll bite -- a cuisine from the country sandwiched between southeast Thailand and French Vietnam, cooked by a former Fleur de Sel guy is worth checking out. They're hoping to open the week of 11/27.

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Also, remember when the Bluths hired a PR person?

BUSTER: I will be neither seen nor heard.

rice grab: The term my roommate uses for when he eats my cold leftover rice straight from the rice cooker. (Doug says I have to specify that it can only be called a rice grab if the rice has been sitting in the rice cooker for at least 12 hours.)

"I did a rice grab today and there was a really crunchy kernel in there. How old was it, like five days old?"

New phrase I coined this weekend:

Living with the numbers -- Becoming accustomed to increased weight.

"When I got on the scale at the beginning of the summer, I was disgusted by how much weight I'd gained. But now that I've been living with the numbers for a few months, it doesn't seem so bad."

"I saw Pepper Dennis on the street today. Remember how skinny she was in X-Men? She's totally living with the numbers now."

"He's going to need a lot of plastic surgery to sew up all the loose skin now that he's gone all Karl Lagerfeld. He looked so much better when he was living with the numbers."

Circulate at will.