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By Root 748 0

and I sat down in a top-floor room, with a simmering hot pot in the center of the table. Mr Matsuoka, the owner, prepared our meal personally. Sumo wrestlers, I discovered, don’t just eat that one bowl of soup, as I’d seen them do earlier at the stable. They eat often. They sleep in between meals, and the meal is a delicious multistage operation. Essentially, we had a nabe – a big pot of broth into which a procession of ingredients were fed and removed, replaced by other ingredients. Platter after platter of vegetables, meatballs, pork, fish, shellfish, and tofu arrived and were added slowly to the pot – according to cooking time – then transferred to our plates and consumed. The liquid was replenished from time to time as it cooked down or was ladled out, the added flavors growing more assertive over time. The less strongly flavored ingredients went in first; then, over time, things like anchovy paste were introduced.

It was a lot of fun. I’d never seen Michiko and Shinji enjoy themselves so much. It’s a family-type thing, cooking nabe style, explained Michiko. At her family home, relatives might show up for a nabe meal with different ingredients – each relative bringing something – and the adding and removing and serving is casual and fun, like a fondue party. Fooled by the soup I’d seen at the stable, I ate with gusto early on, not prepared for the arrival of more and more plates of raw ingredients, scarfing up scallops and pork and tasty little meatballs with plenty of the hot spicy broth. Soon full, I was taken aback by the traditional ending to a chanko meal – the addition to the remaining broth of cooked rice and beaten egg, a mixture that quickly becomes a delicious but absolutely cementlike porridge. I groaned with apprehension as Mr Matsuoka ladled out generous portions of tasty gruel, but I soldiered on, my belly straining. When the meal was over, I needed help to get up. I was the first to exit the room, and as I painfully staggered down the hall, a door slid open across the way and a large party of about a dozen well-fed and slightly drunk businessmen came tumbling out. One of them looked at me with a surprised expression of recognition. He was one of the guys I’d gotten hammered with at the yakitori joint a week earlier. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been fast asleep in his chair, his face resting on the table.

‘Bourdain-san!’ he cried excitedly. ‘You crazy man chef! Where you go? What you eat next?’

Road to Pailin

I was going to the worst place on earth.

The heart of darkness.

‘But what are you going to do in Cambodia?’ asked the television executive, when I mentioned my destination. Not a bad question as we were, presumably, making a food show.

I had no idea.

‘You should go to this place I heard about,’ said the TV guy, excitedly. ‘A war correspondent I know told me about it. It’s this town in Cambodia, Pailin; it’s in the middle of nowhere, all the way up by the Thai border. Almost no Westerners have been there. It’s a Khmer Rouge stronghold. It’s where they still live. It’s the end of the world. You’ll love it. It’s rich in gems; the streets are supposed to be littered with uncut rubies and sapphires, which is why the Khmer Rouge like it. And get this: The Khmer Rouge is in the casino business now!’

Casinos? Run by the most vicious, hard-core Commie mass murderers in history? Well, why not check it out? I thought. Satan’s Vegas: lounge acts, strippers, maybe a few new casinos surrounded by razor wire and militia. A town where anything would be possible. Lawless. A little dangerous. I liked the idea. The last outpost for international adventurers, spies, speculators, smugglers, mercenaries, and lovers of vast reasonably priced buffets. Sounded good to me. The cutting edge of extreme cuisine. What could the Khmer Rouge be serving to the legions of degenerate gamblers who were no doubt pouring into their former stronghold? What were their plans for the development of tourism? How were they reconciling their formerly stated hopes for a Stone Age agrarian Maoist Valhalla with the logistical