Over the past month of traveling, I’ve fallen in love with street food, especially with banana pancakes.
They’re usually more like crepes, very thin, but fried in quite a bit of fat, positively destroying my hopes of losing the extra weight I’ve gained in my month of eating german Christmas cookies and massive meals over the holidays at home.
These pancakes typically come with your choice of fillings, bananas and eggs being the most common choices. Once the pancakes are cooked and your filling has been folded in, you get to top this off with a choice of toppings – coconut sauce, jam, nutella, sweet milk,… you get the idea.
By far the best pancakes I’ve had here were the ones in Sihanoukville, made by a guy we nicknamed OCD pancake man. His flashy street side cart – with a multicolored roof and big speakers blaring music – was always perfectly organized, and he seemed to spend almost more time cleaning and rearranging his utensils than actually cooking pancakes. In other words, he was just perfect for us paranoid western tourists wanting to experience street food but looking for clinically clean conditions.
He was also perfect for me because I am the most indecisive person in the world (those of you who know me are probably chuckling and nodding right now). He didn’t make me pick from his options on the menu (yes, OCD pancake man has a perfectly laminated menu on the side of his multicolored cart), he was happy to pile up a pancake with banana AND mango, topped with nutella AND sweet milk.
Addictive Banana Pancakes
But most importantly, OCD pancake man seems to share my belief that everything sweet needs a good amount of salt in it, so he fried his lovely pancakes in salted butter. The result was absolutely amazing. Crispy and salty on the outside, sweet and gooey on the inside, with fresh fruity mango (he always gave me a piece to try it while cooking my pancake) and the contrasting rich nutella on top. Heaven! Needless to say, we went there at least once a day during our time in Snooky.
You can find him on the road leading down to Serendipity pier (Serendipity Road), he moves around but his multicolored top is pretty noticeable. There may also be a big crowd or traffic jam around him as he seems to be just as popular with the locals as he was with us. As of January 2014, plain pancakes started at $0.50, but you should really try one with fresh fruit, they’re amazing.
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