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......title..... - continuedKarzai tells of a new chef due to arrive from New York City and laments the difficulty of finding Afghan chefs now that the few Afghan restaurants in the country fight over them. A foreigner would never do. ``It's extremely difficult to train someone [from] outside the culture,'' he says.His eyes widen in amazement at the reaction of some customers to The Helmand's presentation of Afghan food in a Western setting. ``The annoying thing is that people ask, `Is this really Afghani food?''' he says. ``We do present it in European fashion, but the food is pure Afghani.'' Robert Perry knew in 1991 that it was a risk to open a Cambodian restaurant in a city that had never had one. But he felt he had little choice. His wife's parents - Longteine de Monteiro, a chef, and her husband, Kenthao, a former Cambodian diplomat - had moved to Boston, the last leg of their flight after the Khmer Rouge took over their country. For 10 years, Longteine de Monteiro had cooked alone in her small restaurant in Paris, struggling to support the family in exile. Finally, the couple had come to Boston, hoping for a better life and to be with daughter Nadsa Perry, who had moved here a few years earlier with her American husband. But the couple's savings from that Parisian restaurant would dwindle away, Robert Perry realized, if they didn't all take a risk together - and soon. So whether Bostonians were ready or not, Elephant Walk opened in August 1991. The family did not plan a small ethnic-style restaurant to appeal to the Cambodian community. ``Restaurants are very personal,'' Perry says, ``and the de Monteiro family is very sophisticated.'' From the outset, Elephant Walk had a certain panache in its subterranean spot in Union Square, Somerville, sleek and upscale, with a good wine list and a lively , young ambience. De Monteiro had learned French cooking as a girl, when her father, also a diplomat, returned from Hanoi craving French food. Half of Elephant Walk's menu was French, half Cambodian, because she thought that people would at least order the French. The first months were slow, but after one particularly favorable review, ``we exploded,'' Robert Perry says with a laugh. The crowd was so large and the restaurant so unprepared that ``finally, I went out and said, `Clearly, we've lost control of the night. I ask your forgiveness. We'll do the best we can.''' There was thunderous applause. ``That was the most amazing night,'' he recalls. The spacious, beautifully lighted dining room of the second Elephant Walk, on the Boston-Brookline line, evokes Southeast Asia's colonial era, with slowly revolving ceiling fans and a parade of ceramic elephants marching around a high shelf. Longteine de Monteiro, dressed in a chef's jacket, and her daughter, Nadsa Perry, in jeans and a sweatshirt, are a study in contrasts, the older woman exuding dignity, the younger, with masses of wildly curling hair, the epitome of the hip young chef. Robert Perry is open-faced and gregarious. Cambodian restaurants are rare in the United States, and upscale eateries such as the Boston area's two Elephant Walk restaurants are even rarer. So is the food and its presentation. Slices of lime-cured beef are arranged like chrysanthemum petals, sprinkled with bits of red pepper and roasted peanuts, served over greens on an oversized white plate, as artfully done as any haute cuisine dish. The wine and designer beer list is extensive, the service casual but correct. De Monteiro and Nadsa Perry together create Elephant Walk's food. The menu has gone well beyond any standard Cambodian repertoire. ``We went through the dishes we knew,'' Nadsa Perry says, ``and then looked at each other one day and said: `Now what?''' So, using Cambodian classics and the French influence long apparent in Southeast Asia, they began to experiment. Ethnic food often stays the same, the menu never varying from year to year or even from restaurant to restaurant. But to Nadsa Perry, creating new dishes is ``very liberating. The secret,'' she says, ``is to be hungry when you do it.'' ``Cambodian food is very earthy,'' Perry says. More complex than Vietnamese and not as sweet as Thai, the bold cuisine was spun out of Indian and Burmese influences as well as other South Asian cuisines. It's no wonder that the food is good, considering the culture it comes from, she muses: ``Cambodians eat all the time, snacking, snacking, snacking.'' In a lucky alignment of the stars, Food & Wine magazine declared Malaysian food the hottest new trend for 1997 shortly after Penang Malaysian Cuisine opened on Washington Street, in Boston, in December of last year. At the edge of Chinatown's maze of streets and restaurants, Penang stands out. Its look is lively and sleek, from its hardwood floors to its open kitchen, where a chef twirls large, thin rounds of roti canai, an Indian pancake bread. The tableware is a soft celadon stoneware, the artwork is of Malaysian peasant scenes in an Impressionistic style, the background music is rock. Even in midafternoon, the place is busy with tables of young Asians, including a foursome of well-dressed Southeast Asian tourists, and office workers from nearby downtown. Jimmy Toh, manager of Penang, wears a starched white shirt with a band collar, his hair sleeked back. He looks New York City cool. Toh says that Penang was designed to attract a mixed crowd of Asians and Americans. Too many Asian restaurants, he says, are the same: ``same carpeted floor, same decorations.'' Penang opened just as Boston was ready for something new and different. This is the fourth Penang restaurant, named for the resort island off the mainland of Malaysia, and the first outside of New York. June and Suan Lee Cheah, the owners, decided that Boston was the next step in their expansion plans. So far, Boston is returning the compliment, filling the restaurant past early expectations, Toh says. Malaysian food borrows from many cuisines - Chinese, Thai, Indian, Portuguese - and melds them with its own indigenous styles of cooking into unique flavors: spicy, hot, sweet, savory, light, hearty, sour, and soothing. Penang's cuisine is exotic yet enticing. One can have something as familiar as chicken satay with peanut sauce or as unusual as nasi lemak - a plate holding a stack of chili-spiked anchovies, a mound of curried chicken, some pickled vegetables, coconut-flavored rice, and halves of hard-boiled egg. It's a fascinating dish that is often served for breakfast in Malaysia. As Americans, especially business executives, have traveled more in the Far East in recent years, even challenging cuisines seem less intimidating. So it's not surprising to have the pinstripe-suited men at the next table offer suggestions on what to order for lunch. ``Everything's great,'' one says between bites. ``Try the dry curry squid,''' the other suggests as he lifts chopsticks from a plate of squid sprinkled with rings of red chilies. Penang's owners are planning another restaurant, maybe in Back Bay, Toh says. Other cities might be a possibility later, he says, but first a few in Boston. For now, Toh is pleased to run one of the hopping restaurants in Boston. The timing was right, he says. ``Five or eight years ago, Americans might not have gravitated to Malaysian food,'' he says. ``Americans got sophisticated.''
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