- On the sleepy coast of Kep, Cambodia,
you'll find one of the world's best crab markets.
To eat like a local, you choose your crab
directly from ocean baskets,
boil them from right before your eyes,
and feast on all you can eat crab within the market.
If you love crab, this is the Cambodian food trip
where your dreams will come to life.
Now that is what you call a crab steam room.
I was just bathed in crab steam.
(easy listening music)
Good morning. Hope you're having an amazing day.
It's Mark Wiens in Phnom Penh, Cambodia
and today, we're taking a day trip to a coast,
to a place called Kep, and it's famous for crab.
So we're gonna go on a crab road trip today,
and then coming back, we're gonna go visit a pepper farm.
This is gonna be an amazing day trip.
And I can't wait to share it with you.
(easy listening music)
We just made it to Kep.
It's actually not that far away, but it took us
almost a little bit over three hours because the road
conditions are not extremely good.
And the road moves pretty slow, and there's
occasional cows and dogs that cross the road.
And plenty of obstructions, but we made it.
We drove to straight to the local market.
And as soon as you step out of the car,
you can just, this waft of smoking grilled seafood
hits your nose.
It's a little bit of a makeshift market
and located right along the ocean front.
You can smell all the smoke from the grilling seafood.
And whoa, lots of squid here.
But I want to go straight to the pier first
to see the crab situation.
(percussive music)
Wow, this is such an amazing environment,
such an awesome market.
Right along the ocean, and actually I'm standing
on this deck right now.
There are just baskets and baskets of crabs.
They actually grab the crabs right out of the water
and they sell them right here on the bank.
People are here just bargaining for crabs, fresh crabs.
(water splashing)
- [Woman] (Speaks in foreign language).
- So you just gotta come in here and start digging
through the crab baskets and there
are just so many crabs.
We're trying to look for the big size.
- [Woman] (Speaks in foreign language).
- (Speaks in foreign language).
- Oh yeah, look at this guy, small body but huge pinchers.
Check that out.
Okay, and this is oh, okay, another thing I want to show you
is that you gotta tell the difference between
a male and a female.
This one I think is a male crab, because of that,
it's called an apron.
- One kilo eight dollars.
- [Man] Eight dollars.
How about six dollars?
- Six dollars.
- No, no.
- (Speaks in foreign language).
- (Mumbles).
- [Man] Okay seven dollars?
- [Woman] No no no.
- Crab as fresh as you can possibly get.
- Two kilo.
- Okay, that's exactly two kilos.
- [Man] Looks like (mumbles).
- [Man] (Speaks in foreign language).
- [Woman] (Speaks in foreign language).
- Okay (speaks in foreign language).
That was an energetic situation but it was pretty fun.
You just kind of come over here.
You talk to some of the vendors.
They give you a price and from what I understand,
the price really really fluctuates between the day.
So it's kind of hard to know the exact price of the day.
Today it was eight dollars per kilo.
And you can bargain.
We got it to seven dollars per kilo.
There's a lady cooking right here on the ocean front.
Let's see if she can cook these crabs.
(percussive music)
- [Woman] (Speaks in foreign language).
- This is absolutely amazing.
They take the crabs, they put them into a pot.
Oh, as soon as they're done boiling, then just drop
them into a big basket and let them steam.
And then drop them into a bag.
Oh, that's just fresh boiled crab.
It's amazing, the smell of the wood fire smoke
mixed with the fresh crab and the sea breeze.
This is a perfect crab eating atmosphere here.
So now you just kind of sit around and wait and just hold on
and wait for your crab to finish boiling.
That puff of crab stream, oh wow.
- (Speaks in foreign language).
- [Woman] (Speaks in foreign language).
- Now only only is this a crab paradise
but you can step over to another stall.
And just find an abundance of seafood.
There's so much squid.
There's lot of different types of fish.
And we ordered up a, you can just kind of pick and choose.
They grill them.
And if you order them, then you put them back on the grill
for a little while to heat them again.
And she has so many good looking fish.
Once you finish the mission of buying all of your seafood
and getting cooked, next step is to buy rice and sauce.
And I love how they put the sauce in old water bottles.
There's red sauce, there's green sauce.
But she said that the green sauce is spicier,
so we went with the green sauce.
And the sauce just completes the meal.
We got all the seafood and you just come back to the market.
You can take it all to go and you can sit somewhere
or you can eat it within the market.
And you just go to to one of the drink stalls.
And they have tables set up.
You just order drinks and you can sit at the table
and devour all of the seafood.
One of the best gift opening sessions I've ever had.
What a just a stunning fish market
seafood devouring environment.
They even gave us a plate so we can pile all the crabs
onto the plate.
Look at this pile of freshly boiled crabs.
And they've got the different types of fish here.
We've got the bottles of sauce and we've got
some rice to accompany it.
We got to begin with crab.
I'm gonna go for this guy right here on the top.
Grab a crab.
What I love about these crabs is that their bodies
are pretty small, but then those claws are just huge.
And don't eat the rubber band, break off the claw.
We're gonna do a lot of crunching and munching in this meal.
I think they're blue swimmer crabs.
But what's cool about these crabs is that they're
really easy to pluck open on your own
just with your fingers or with your mouth,
you can crack them and just kind of break the shells
are really soft.
Oh yes. Alright.
Okay, cheers, (mumbles).
(pop music)
Hmm, oh wow.
The freshness just lights up your mouth.
(laughing)
Nuggets just pop out.
Oh thank you very much.
- Thank you.
Just nuggets of crab just slide out with ease
like you're pulling a knife out of a sheath.
(pop music)
Oh wow. You can see that they're male crabs.
I think what you do is you removed the apron
and then you can turn it around.
Take off the top of the shell here,
and that removes the whole head and eyes
and top shell, and then from here,
what's easiest to do is just break it in half.
Just break it in half like that,
and then, because these are male crabs, they're
mostly meat on the inside.
Although there's a little big of (mumbles) I believe.
And you should have little drumsticks of oh,
just popping oozing crab.
It's just unbelievably juicy.
Oh, that is some of the juiciest crab I've had in my life.
One crab down, let's move into the fish, the trio.
Stingray skin is very, very thick.
Oh, look how stringy that meat is down there.
Check out that. It looks like it's chicken breast.
That is just pulled into strings of chicken breast.
It really is like chicken but softer
and a little more juicy.
Okay, that's really good, but this fish
would be better with a little bit of sauce in it
because it's pretty plain tasting.
I'm gonna dump sauce into this side
of my styrofoam container.
And then we also got some of the red sauce
which she gave us on the bottom of the bottle
to eat with the fish over here.
Oh yeah, it's so fleshy, it's just like solid meat.
Okay, the stingray is really enhanced with sauce.
Peel back, oh you peel back that skin
and you just got juicy oily fish flesh.
(pop music)
Oh that's butter. Oh that texture
is just completely different.
It's so oily and you can feel those omega threes, those
fatties, those fatty oils just overwhelming your mouth.
That fish has this wonderful textural quality to it.
And it is time to now move into another crab.
For this crab, I'm gonna try dipping it in a sauce.
Oh yes, oh look at that, it just slides.
Oh, it just slides out and splatters
with a little juice.
Give it a nice little dunk in the sauce,
and a bit sized nugget.
(pop music)
Oh, okay.
That is good with the sauce too.
Definitely very good with the sauce.
'Cause that's a nice garlicky compliment
to the incredibly fresh and incredibly sweet crab.
This is some of the easiest crab that I've eaten too.
It's so easy to peel.
All you do is literally like you just crack it with ease.
Oh that is just crab sensation.
You can literally just grab fish by the fistful.
Look at it, that's an entire fistful of fish.
And I'm gonna dump this into the sauce.
Just kind of wipe up the sauce.
That might actually be too much for a one biter.
Or actually not.
(pop music)
- [Man] It's so nice and juicy.
- Hello.
- [Man] Hello.
- [Man] So that is creamy.
- [Man] Oh yeah.
- (Speaks in foreign language).
- [Man] Two kilos of mango.
- Thank you.
She's giving me a sample of the mangosteen right now.
Oh yeah, oh that's just juicy sweet.
This might be one of the more perfect markets
in the entire world.
Not only do they have an unbelievable fresh selection
of crab, and fish, and seafood, but it is just loaded.
This market is loaded with durian right now.
The only thing that I could possibly want right now
after that seafood is durian.
So Gil and I and Ying are all gonna break durian together.
- [Woman] (Speaks in foreign language).
- Ying, how is it?
- Very good.
- Oh that is a proper aroma.
That's how you want durian to smell.
Okay I can't wait. Cheers.
Uh hmm.
Oh wow.
I might just stay here on the ground for the
rest of the afternoon.
Oh that's like condensed whipped cream
with a better wine almost alcoholic taste to it.
- Amazing. Dude it has been too long.
I'm happy to break my durian fast with this one.
Amazing, Cambodia, Kampot specific,
Kampot durian is amazing.
- I ended up going back to that same fish stall
to buy one more fish to take away for dinner tonight.
We're gonna bring this back and eat it for dinner tonight.
But we gotta go now.
We've spent way too long at this market.
We just got lost in the maze of seafood and durian.
(laughing)
- (Speaks in foreign language).
Thank you.
(pop music)
We have just arrived.
That was just about a 15 minute drive
from the center of Kep and there are a bunch of
pepper farms in this area.
We came to one that's called Sothy's Pepper Farm.
But Kampot and Kep, this area of Cambodia
is known for having the best pepper.
Growing the best pepper in the entire world.
A lot of people regard it as the finest quality pepper.
Whoa, black pepper corns.
What are these, these are like pickled?
- This is a green pepper like pickle with crystal salt.
- Oh that black pepper is incredible.
- It's like uh--
- And these are green pepper corns with some salt.
- Yeah.
- Okay, oh yeah.
- Yummy (laughs).
- Oh it's so good.
- [Man] This is amazing.
- Yeah.
- Oh that's incredibly fragrant.
There are three main reasons why Kampot pepper is known
to be some of the best in the world.
Number one is because of the minerals in the soil
that is natural here in the environment
and the climate here.
- Quartz.
- And this is quartz?
- Yeah.
- And the second reason is there's a whole association.
- Yeah.
- Of Kampot pepper growing association
and they keep the quality high,
they set the regulations high.
And then the third reason is because of the chemical free.
- [Man] Yeah.
- So chemical free growing using natural fertilizers.
That really is why Kampot pepper is regarded
as the best in the world and I've been
just snacking on the pepper this entire time.
I've eaten handfuls of pepper already
and my mouth is burning and numb.
And I love it. It's so good.
- [Man] How you (mumbles) doing?
- [Man] We love it.
- [Man] Alright, I see.
- [Man] We are durian lovers,
we have some in the car right now.
(laughing)
This is actually a whole eco farm.
- [Man] Eco friendly, yeah.
- And it's just blooming with fruit.
Just mangoes all over, there's jack fruit.
There's all sorts of edible things
and then right behind me right here
is one of the pepper fields
that we're gonna walk through.
Unfortunately, they have already done the harvesting
because it's about to be rainy season.
So they've done most of the harvesting.
So there's not a lot of pepper corns
on the actual vines, but there's just a few.
(pop music)
I just love green pepper, oh it's good.
And you also just picked, this will be pepper
when it grows bigger.
- That'll be pepper, yes yeah.
- Ah, that's just a little tiny baby peppercorn stem.
- [Man] Yeah, that will be flower (mumbles) later.
- Ooh, oh yeah.
You can definitely taste that it's pepper.
It kind of goes up your nose a little bit.
Young pepper leaves.
- [Man] Yeah, young pepper leaf.
- Oh cool, thank you.
Oh, oh it's amazing.
Has a little bit of a lemon flavor to it.
The green peppercorns are the ones that turn
black when you dry them.
- [Man] Absolutely yeah.
- And then the red peppercorns are more ripe.
- [Man] Right.
- The red peppercorns.
(pop music)
Oh wow.
Oh they do have like an almost fruity pepper taste to them.
It's a type of spice that does grow on you
as you keep eating.
And it just makes your mouth feel a little bit on fire
and numbing and it's so good.
(pop music)
Oh that is a spice overload. The fruity spice of the vine.
Check out these durians, oh.
- They're not ripe yet okay.
When it's ripe, you smell this one.
- [Man] Oh wow.
- [Man] This is not (mumbles)--
- Look at this little baby.
This farm is just gorgeous.
Full of pepper, there's fruit trees, durian, rambutan.
There's herbs all over. Amazing place.
Ooh.
- Inside.
- It's like a pepper walk in fridge but an oven.
Okay thank you.
- [Man] (Mumbles).
- Okay.
I've already been in a crab steam room
but now I'm in a pepper steam room.
This is just a drying room and it's really hot in here.
I can feel the humidity and the heat.
And this is a pepper drying room.
The pepper aroma is insane here. It's pepper steam.
This room is just filled with pepper steam.
This is a spice lover's dream come true.
I could sleep in here.
Look at the size of these mangoes, just growing.
Yeah, they're beautiful, oh this one (laughs).
- This one (laughs).
- This one is huge, look at the size of that mango.
- [Man] Red, black and white.
(Mumbles), we do quality control.
- Another reason that Kampot pepper is so good
is that it's hand sorted.
They just sort through the pepper by hand
picking out all the bad things and picking out
all the broken pepper corns and just choosing
the best quality.
And that's gonna wrap up this day trip to Kep
and to the seafood market.
That's literally the definition of a food road trip.
We just drove straight to the seafood market.
We bought seafood, we ate seafood.
Oh and then we had a durian.
And then we drove to this pepper farm.
The pepper farm tour was really really a learning experience
and the guide is really knowledgeable.
And the actual tour of the pepper farm is free
but then you have an opportunity to buy pepper.
This was such a fantastic day trip from Phnom Penh
and it was great to get out of the city.
Uh, all those crabs, okay.
I'm gonna have to end the video right now
before I get too excited again about the crab
and the durian, and the pepper.
But I want to say a big thank you to you
for watching this video.
Please remember to give it a thumbs up if you enjoyed it.
Also, I'd love to hear from you
in the comments section below.
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Goodbye from the pepper field in Kampot, in Kep.
This was fantastic and I'll see you on the next video.