I have recently bought beef mince at Lucky for bolognaise sauces and I haven't noticed them being any fattier than "usual" but then again I am carnivorious maximus

Try Ohn Haseltine 012 434 113. She makes and distributes sausages all over Phnom Penh and has an industrial mincer. If you wanted a few kilos I am sure she could meet you on her rounds. Maybe also Dan Meats.

IT

try Auskhmer. They are an importer who you can buy direct from.
http://www.expat-advisory.com/forums/major-clearance-sale-on-food-and-wi...

I wouldn't touch lucky mince myself
We fed it raw to our cat several times (as we did in Australia without any problems and recommended by the breeder) and it was sick every time

In the absence of any mouse catching skills, your cat should be thankful...

THE KID

Re organic vegetables: yes, there are a number of producers out there whose farms are doing the organic thing. Some farmer training NGOs with an environmental bent are pushing for natural pest control (planting a variety of plants to keep away pests naturally, etc) and natural fertilizers. As most of the fields are sprayed by hand (not by plane) there'd be less cross-contamination from non-organic farms then you might get in some other countries.

It is difficult to just trust that something's organic, here in Cambodia. I'm sure you could ask Veggy's more about their specfic suppliers and they'd be happy to tell you more.

Be suspicious if the "organic" veggies have bright, shiny, perfect skin! Usually the more natural alternatives look more natural - blemishes and all.

BC

it's funny, but i hardly ever see cats around in Cambodia. Hmm, unknown meat content in mince. HMMMM!.

I buy meat from Lucky - and it smells "off" almost everytime - yet my husband says it's nothing.I would have gladly said I am willing to become a vegetarian, however the damm vegetables here isn't even good. As soon as you take them out of Lucky they start to wilt within days.This is a peaceful country - but their food sucks.(i just hope I am not damaging myself of my child, to find out later that there is something wrong due to the food and water we consumed.)L

have you seen the size of the rats here? i saw some on the street outside recently that could give a good-sized bulldog a run for its money ...

cat, dog, frog, rat, maggot, pidgeon, sparrow, monkey, spiders, grrasshoppers, snakes, buffalo ...did i miss anything ... ? ... or any combination of the above ... :twisted:

I'm not sure i can differentiate "the kid" from "Azuriel" after this post.

sorry if that offends either one of you

Cockroaches. But only the black ones apparently. I mean ewww who'd eat a brown cockroach???

BC

my sense of humor's turning a bit sour lately, with the recent bout of gastro after eating some cakes from Lucky ... ... ...

maybe thats the reason they call it 'Lucky', no? ur lucky if u get anything perfectly the way its supposed to b

The annoying part with Veggy's is that SO many people buy their produce from them on the assumpition it is organic and the super rude females in there will also tell you that they are organic!

I started to doubt BECAUSE the skins and leaves and all the rest are WAY to perfect for what I remember organic produce to look like.....maybe it's all just come along way over the years.

Then again it's from Vietnam - so you get insecticides AND agent orange - bonus.

my goodness. what if they put in formalin to embalm the veg? i've heard it's been done in other places..

Isn't formalin for keeping noodles fresh, not veggies?

I have seen the rats here and yes, they could carry a small child off. I have often thought of buying a nice bow and arrow set from Citadel and hunting them for sport..........

THE KID

if they can put it in noodles, they can put it in veg n fruit, no? latest story i've heard is they put embalming fluid in fish that are no longer fresh in order to make the flesh fresh looking, but you can tell it isnt if you look at the eyes and when you touch the fish it wont still have the gooey substance covering its scales, which wouldve indicated it was fresh caught.

someone also told me they saw a documentary where some sellers would stick in a waterhose into the mouth of a the no-longer-fresh cow carcass and fill it up til it bloats enough to make it look plump and fresh. yuck.

another story ive heard is that some intrepid entrepreneurs would go through rubbage bins behind restaurants to look for cast off meat bits/entrails, chop them up, dry them and sell them off as meat floss.

and lastly, those durian chips that are sometimes sold by roadside stalls, some of the sellers mix in plastic chips cut out from softdrink bottles and fry em up to make em look nice n crunchy.

Well Yan, snopes.com doesn't have much coverage of Cambodia, but I'll step up:

* People who want to buy fish in Cambodia should buy the swimming kind that get whacked fresh, just-4-u;
* I would expect that you'd be able to taste embalming fluid in fish, if they were using high quality non-smelly stuff their profits would be eaten up in purchase of the fluid;
* I'll give a "possibly" to the cow carcass because I know this is done with birds, though I understood the reason was that the meat would weigh more at the time of purchase. I'm not sure how convincing a revived cow carcass could be, but I've not tried ex-bovine resuscitation myself;
* Meat floss gets a "probably" and rates right up there with my permanent suspicion of minced meat here. Given what I *know* can go into the stuff in Australia and the USA, what might be included here just doesn't bear much thought;
* Durian chips, nope. These folks get by mostly on regular business, and this is the sort of thing that would get you beaten up I think. Your customers are going to notice the plastic chips every time and know where to find you.

Ah, procrastination, my friend... you're back!

BC[/]

mix in plastic chips cut out from softdrink bottles and fry em up to make em look nice n crunchy.

are we getting off topic or just getting started?

haha! it's still within topic! 'when 'meat' is not really 'meat' per se.

by basing upon logical deductions, yes, embalming fluid WOULD be rather pricey for most poor sellers, hence, not financially feasible (unless they got it in black market somehow, stolen off an unknowing embalmer, but that would bring us to wonder who embalms dead people here). so that, logically, should be a FAIL.

as for plastic chips, yes, i would expect the plastic to, depending on its size and thickness, shrivel up a bit, if not into a ball, then around the edges and turn a bit black and weird. quite likely, someone was pulling my leg.

and yes, procrastination most certainly IS in attendance. you can most certainly tell how bored i must be to put up so many posts. after a while, the brain just gets saturated and then you remember all sorts of interesting rot and post it here. heh.

I bet you all that food we are eating here is 10 times healthier then food in US, Australia or Europe, e.g. these buffaloes have never been fed growth hormones or dodgy stuff to make them fat.

While that may be true about do not underestimate the other side of life. Making and extra $ 0.10 per melon by injecting water into the melon with a syringe to make it heavier for them may not seem all that wrong. There are other stories about acid in water to make the corn yellower. How true these are...IMO, just urban myths. If anyone can provide proven facts that these are true, please go ahead

BUT, try to stay away from the swimming ones that came from the river in phnom penh, the one that runs by the riverside ... if you don't know how to tell, then just stay away from the ones with extra eyes ...

What about beer-battered plastic, Mr. Dean-from-the-Curiousity-Show?

you all seem to be missing the original question...Anyone?
And where is L&A now?

It's definitely not 100% beef but would like to know what is going on and where I can buy meat that claims to be just that!

buy some land in preah vihear and raise your cows/pigs/chickens, or whatever your meat preference may be ...

vegetarians beware: ever wondered what gets mixed in with the soy beans when they make that mock meat you've been chowing down?

L&A gave into temptation and tried the Lucky Mystery Meat...

maybe someone should drop by the coffin-makers on the riverside, make some enquiries on L&A's whereabouts?

Okay - not dead but so did my head in trying to figure out where my answer went, or the question for that matter??!!!

Still none the wiser.... can someone do forensics on that meat hee ha - curiosity has the better of me now.

And is Bayon or Thai Hout any better.....

Maybe I'll just go hippie veggie for a while.

on second thoughts, you might want to ditch that forensics test ...

reminds me of an article i read in a chinese paper not too long ago, prolly around when this thread was first started ... an elderly couple, owners of a mom & pop pork bun stall in shaanxi, south-west china, were recently arrested by police after failing a health inspection. Customers were quoted describing the owners as always friendly, and the food was described as "tasty", "tender", "good value", among others ... after one particularly picky diner complained about finding minced up cotten threads in the filling of hi BBQ pork bun, some provincial inspectors from the health authorities did an inspection on the contents of the buns' fillings ...

turns out that for the fillings, they were using mostly minced up bodies of dead homeless people from the slum areas nearby (so what some homeless guy dies, and then the body disappears, every week or 3? no-one around there would even notice, much less care enough to investigate ... ) ... supposedly human flesh is very tender ...

BUT, having said all that, please don't let me put you off the fine TENDER PORK mince at lucky ... ... i'm sure that the honest, upstanding people over at lucky would never do something like this ... right ... ? ...

PS. those pork buns the street vendors in PP sell, wonder where they get their mince from?

OMGosh! Is there anything that I can eat when I get there!

or should I just pack my own peanut butter, crackers, Nutella, coffee,
coffeemate (yuck! but I def. won't be ingesting any dairy) canned tuna,
oatmeal, yada yada???

I think I'm converting while I'm in PP and going over to the other side
Veggies can't be that bad there..........can they??

OG

Don't panic. Just stay away from the fruit, vegetables, meat, and diary products and you'll be fine. The ol' fallback of rice and soy sauce will always be there.

Ummm of course there's food to be eaten here or the expats would arrange for it to be, or entrepreneurs would see the growing market and start bringing it in to sell to them. Both of which have happened over the past 7 years or so and now there is plenty to choose from.

Dairy here is generally fine, but rare as it's not produced domestically. Fresh milk for instance is trucked in from Vietnam or Thailand. Usually only foreigners buy it. Here, milk comes from a can, not a cow.

If you're wanting to live only on "safe"/boring food including "peanut butter, crackers, Nutella, coffee, coffeemate, canned tuna, oatmeal, yada yada???" then you can buy that all here too, so, no need to pack it.

BC

Thanks, wasn't looking forward to lugging all that with me.........

I have been searching the archives on restaurants and I found some good info
providing that the restaurants are still there.
I guess the good rule of thumb, as long as its piping 'hot' it should be fine.

OG

one thing i
ve noticed, though ... chillies here tend to be on the spicy side, so unless you like your food really spicy, make sure your waitress understands which "hot" you're referring to ...

I bought some hamburger patties from openwine. Not bad if you eat them within 2 days. After that forget it. I thought that they would have lasted longer as they ar vacuum packed.

be careful. I have spoken to a couple of other people and they have mentioned the same thing. Only a two day expiry on them even though they seemed to be well sealed.

Back to the original question - I've never had a problem with Lucky's minced beef, but then I haven't had it for a year or so.

Why don't you all do what Lucky does - go to the market early in the morning and buy some nice fresh beef and mince/chop it yourself - SAFE. Whether Lucky then adds a filler, who knows!!

As for veg - I'd never trust anything that I didn't see growing. Wash thoroughly in clean water.

Cambodia is awash with dangerous pesticides and even though a number of NGOs are doing great work, there are a lot of farmers who are not educated about the dangers.

Can anyone recommend the best place to go for a (real) bacon sandwich over the weekend without any suspect local protein?

moved this as a new posting

http://www.expat-advisory.com/forum/asia/cambodia/phnom-penh-pub-expats-...

I believe that Lucky's has a central processing place for all their produce near the German Embassy / Olympic Stadium / Prampi Makarra / Pizza Company.

I assume due to the size of their operations they buy direct from the farmers or middle men but god only knows what happens to it by the time it gets packaged because most of it is pretty terrible.

Some Asian friends recommended washing any vegetables from there in vinegar first to get any chemicals out.

They do sell Australian meat as well but I think it would be better to go to the meat importers.

I just buy booze, canned food, toiletries etc from Lucky's, if I want a good steak then I go to a restaurant (and pray that they source good meat and veg without pesticides and other crap).

Anyone know if Auskhmer is still in business? Email bounced.

Just tried the mince from Lucky this week and it seemed fine.

Mincing a big, obvious piece of meat yourself (eg a muscle) is the best way I think. Perhaps add some stale breadcrumbs to fill out a bit, which should be easy to come by, judging comments here.

Anyone know where to get a small mincer? I got a fairly large cheap aluminium one from the market, but it's no use unless mincing a few kilos at a time, as 2-300g seems to get stuck in it and wasted. The khmer method is simply chop-chop-chop with a cleaver - a lot of work.

The veggies are all chock full of nasties - whenever we bring back stuff grown in the backyard in the province the neighbours are queuing up to get some veg "without chemicals", so the khmers obviously know the real story. Or they just like free food.

recently arrived back in the country after almost a year back in Oz ... and i see this thread's still well and alive ...

since coming back, all i've bought from lucky has been drinks, toiletries, and packaged goods ... that cream sponge roll i bought the day after i got counts as packaged goods too ...

Here's an alternative question: What do they Lucky people put in their cream ... ? ... pesticide ... ? ...

Some ants (okay, okay, a LOT of ants) got into my cream roll before i remembered to eat it ... which might've been a blessing in disguise ... one interesting point to note ... all the ants crawling around on the sponge were busy carrying crumbs away, but the dozens of ants that touched the cream all DIED !!! O_O

been getting all my meat fresh fom the market of late ... and the missus does it the proper way: chop-chop-chop-chop-chop-chop with a big cleaver ...

Taylor: re the mincer ... try the homewares store at the back of pencil, the one near the cambodiana hotel ... theve've got big chunky steel ones for a coupla dollars a pop ...

Agree with most people on here, Lucky is good for canned and packaged goods, anything fresh is much better at the market, with a couple of exceptions:

- Cambodian Fillet Steak (try finding someone at the market who know what a fillet is)
- Bacon
- Pasteurised milk

I think the Khmer method of making mince with a clever and a slightly fatty piece of beef is by far the best method, I don't like it too lean. That said the minced beef in Lucky's is much leaner than what I purchase in the UK, I know this as my chili con carne's always have a think layer of fat on top of them after they've been left to sit, in Cambodia they never do, I have to add extra fat.

I didn't read all of the posts and i don't know if somebody wrote the same thing,but i would like to say that i bought chicken drumsticks and salmon,in Lucky, as fresh meat,but when i wanted to prepare them they were frozen inside.That means meat is frozen and defrosted for who knows how many times!? Not good! Also i found organic veggies but i had to throw them all 'cos they were full of huge worms ( not a big fan of worms too)...

I think their definition of "fresh" meat is basically meat that hasn't been left in the walk-in freezer for more than 6 months ... get to know your local butchers in the markets, and they'll usually let you order stuff like wings and drumsticks if you give them a day's notice ... dunno where to get fresh salmon from though ... ...