Pub Grub, Ketchup on the Side, Will Fill You Up

There is a whole world of wholesome grub around town that could be described as Australian, British, Irish... For convenience, we will call it Comfort Cuisine. It could also be known as Boarding School Food, but that may bring back unwelcome memories.

Whatever the label, this category is heavy on the calories, good in the mouth and generous on the plate. Big portions are the rule and ketchup and HP sauce are usually present.

Ettamogah Pub on Sihanouk Boulevard is just a brief stagger from Lucky’s Supermarket, that expat magnet, and many people recover from trolling the aisles and fending off the vendors and beggars with a restorative pint at the Australian-flavor Ettamogah.

Portions are immense and the fish ’n’ chips is a standing favorite at $4.80, guaranteed to fill you up and restore your spirits. There’s an Aussie Battler—beef and onions with spices cooked in a crust for $3; add mashed potatoes and peas for a balanced meal at $6. Hamburger fans can wade into a big burger for $3.30 that encompasses beef, cheese, bacon and beetroot, but serious gourmands can add on extra cheese, bacon and egg for another $1.50. Still hungry? Ettamogah makes its own ice cream and two scoops will only set you back $0.90.

Proprietors Chitta and Tony are surging into the new millennium with facilities for accepting credit cards and a business center where patrons can check for e-mail, send faxes or browse the Net.

The London Book Center opened up at 65 Street 240, just east of Norodom Boulevard, to sell used books but quickly became somewhere to have a coffee and browse a book, still later to have a beer and browse a book. Now has developed to where you can have some shepherd’s pie and a read book or even bangers-and-mash and a book. You don’t actually have to read a book.

The chef must have learned his trade in his mum's kitchen, for how else would he understand the nuances of onion gravy so well?

Kiwi Bar has moved from its cozy nook amid the noise and rocky road surface of Pasteur to comfier quarters at 180 Street 130, near Psar Thmei—Central Market. There’s the self-proclaimed Biggest Steak in Town and the priced-to-sell $1 Angkor draft beer, which takes flight on free chicken wings from 6 pm until they run out of chickens.

Although the DMZ, just a kangaroo hop across from The Cambodia Daily on the east side of Street 240, is as Australian as they come, most of the food there is more rice-based than pie-based. Nonetheless, they do have meat pies—the Australian government would probably disown them if they didn’t—and the breakfasts are of the stick-to-the-ribs persuasion and legendary value at $2.50 to $3 for the full array of baked beans, eggs, bacon, sausage and most everything else.

Added to which, you can watch Aussie rules football as you eat.

And if Australian food seems too exotic, you can go back to basics, so to speak, and eat one of Tom's plowman’s lunches—bread, cheese and pickled onion—for $2.50.

Tom of Tom’s Irish Pub fame is now in his fourth location at 170 Street 63, just across from the former Tom’s. The new premises are designed to be reminiscent of the old ones, so regulars are not too befuddled by the switch, and there’s a meeting room upstairs for private festivities, along with patio space to catch the evening breezes.