“It's best not to stray from Cambodian specialties”

It's best not to stray from Cambodian specialties

Posted: 24 Nov 2010 09:14 PM PST

By Gwenn Friss

November 25, 2010 12:00 AM

Bopha's Stir Crazy

Casual dining

address: 570 MacArthur Blvd. (Route 28), Bourne.

Phone: (508) 564-6464

online: stircrazyrestaurant.com

Since 1989, when Bopha's Stir Crazy opened near the Cape Cod Canal, I've been following the Cambodian restaurant as it moved and grew.

From a six-table shack near the train tracks, it went across the bridge to a Route 28 location where the food was good but the atmosphere leaned toward cafeteria. I had been meaning to try Stir Crazy's latest incarnation and, on a recent weekend, my husband and I did.

The place is beautiful, with muted earth tones, paddle fans and a very nice, full bar where we sat while waiting for a table. Bopha Samms, who survived the 1975 Communist takeover in her native Cambodia, sells totes and other goods in the restaurant lobby to benefit Cambodian children in need. Her work, and the restaurant, are described at www.stircrazyrestaurant.com.

While the restaurant's décor has come up in the world and the menu expanded some, it is still the handmade vegetarian egg rolls ($6.95 for three); spicy pork finger rolls ($6.95 for five); and Nhem Shross, a fresh mix of vegetables, angel hair noodles and shrimp rolled in a tapioca rice shell ($3.50), that stand out. We tried all three on a sampler plate ($8.50 for two to share) and found the selection, served with spicy peanut sauce, was a highlight of the meal. My husband especially liked the finger rolls with pork ground so fine it mixed with seasonings to make a paste. My favorite was the vegetarian egg roll, with flavors so balanced you could taste the crisp cabbage inside the fried, multilayered dough. This is the kind of wrapper that splinters into a delicious shower of crumbs when you bite into it.

The special soup — chicken and pineapple stuffed with veggies — was also delicious, with a wonderfully complex broth.

My husband's entrée, Beef Bar Bong ($14.95), had coconut and lime flavors in the marinated beef strips, cold angel hair noodles and salad, which was a little short on vegetables. Several of Stir Crazy's dishes are served with rice or noodles on a salad. It was a good meal.

I was disappointed in the vegetable stir-fry with tofu that I ordered ($13.95) because, unlike the fried vegetarian rolls, you could not taste individual vegetables through the heavy and bland sauce. I was happy to see cauliflower in the mix, but didn't like the fact that, on this visit, the vegetables were soft and the tofu tough. The hot sauce our waitress brought to the table woke up the dish, but I didn't finish my dinner.

Remembering Bopha's curries of the old days, I ordered the red curry special to go ($18.95). It was the regular Sum Law Ktiss (red curry) on the menu with the addition of scallops and chunks of salmon fillet. At home, I tasted a mouthful and savored the creamy, heavily spiced coconut milk sauce nestled on fragrant jasmine rice and studded with the tender crisp veggies that were missing from the stir-fry.

The lesson is to order one of the nine dishes with a Cambodian name, because they play to the cooking strengths of the woman who vowed if she survived the work camps (14 members of her family did not) she would spend her life feeding people.

Gwenn Friss is food editor of The Cape Cod Times, in which this review first appeared.

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