Nom Banh Chok Charity Breakfast — Wat Damnak
Nom Banh Chok Charity Breakfast — Wat Damnak
Long before dawn on 21 July, a group of Siem Reap chefs will gather at Wat Damnak to start making noodles. By six in the morning they will be selling breakfast, and by ten they will have fed 210 monks and raised money for a school for deaf children.
Nom banh chok is Cambodia’s breakfast: fresh rice noodles under a pale yellow-green fish and lemongrass gravy, piled with raw vegetables and herbs — banana flower, cucumber, water lily stem, bean sprouts, mint. It is sold from baskets by women walking the lanes at first light, and it is the most Khmer thing you can eat. The dish is so tied to the morning that it is often simply called “Khmer noodles”.
This charity breakfast is run by Asian Street Food – Cambodia, a community of local chefs who put on these events to raise money and to keep Khmer street-food traditions alive. Proceeds from the morning are split: 70% to the Siem Reap Special Education School — the city’s school for deaf children — and 30% to the children’s hospital.
The morning runs to a real schedule. Cooks and volunteers gather at 4:30am to prepare the accompanying dishes and wash the vegetables. From 6:00am the noodles go on sale. At 6:25 the team begins preparing food for the monks — 210 monks and five senior priests from four different pagodas — and the offering ceremony takes place at 7:00am. The sale continues until 10:00am, followed by closing remarks and a group photograph.
Visitors are welcome, and this is a rare chance to see a Khmer merit-making morning from the inside rather than the outside. Come early — the point of the thing happens before seven. Bring small notes, eat a bowl or three, and dress modestly: this is a working pagoda.
