Monorom Cambodian Restaurant

It’s possible to go into Monorom, a Cambodian restaurant in Long Beach, and order a meal that sounds Chinese: Cantonese noodles, chow mein, roasted duck, and sweet & sour fish all sound pretty familiar, right? Same for some very Thai-sounding dishes, including pad Thai, lemongrass chicken, tom yum, and larb salad. Or Vietnamese, from a Vietnamese sweet & sour soup to shaken beef and papaya salad.

The thing with Monorom is that these dishes – and ones explicitly listed as Khmer favorites, including a steak with anchovy and eggplant salad, fried fish with mango sauce, and Phnom Penh noodles – have all been filtered through a Cambodian lens, which means that the beef skewers, lemongrass chicken, and green mango salad we ordered had stronger salty and/or sour notes than Chinese or Thai versions. Explicitly Khmer items such as Prahok Creme, a citric and herbal ground pork and smoked fish curry that’s spooned onto sliced seasonal vegetables, offered flavors and presentation that can’t be found locally outside of Cambodian restaurants, while crispy pork belly can be ordered with watercress, a lush green vegetable that’s similar to neutral, spiceless scallions, balancing the fatty meat.