1991 in Cambridge, Massachusetts by Longteine de Monteiro. The restaurant also created a cookbook of the same name, which is the first Cambodian American cookbook. In 2000 a part of Central Long Beach was officially designated as Cambodia Town, where since 2005 an annual parade and culture festival takes place there that also features Cambodian cuisine. Since the late 2010s there has been an emerging wave of second-generation Cambodian American chefs and restaurants in the U.S. focusing on Cambodian cuisine. Among them is the award-winning restaurant Nyum Bai opened in Fruitvale, Oakland, California in 2018 by chef Nite Yun. Among other Southeast Asian cuisines Due to extended culinary contacts and shared extraregional influences from India, China and France, modern Cambodian cuisine has many similarities with the neighbouring Thai, Vietnamese and Lao cuisines. Nowadays, the flavour principles of many Khmer dishes, such as sour fish soups, stews and coconut-based curries, including fish amok, are very similar to Central Thai cuisine, although Khmer dishes contain much less chilli and sugar and make greater use of aromatic herbs and spices. Both Thai and Khmer royal cuisines use special herbal spice pastes for curries, soups, and stews. Khmer cuisine has relatively less in common with Northeast Thai and Lao cuisines, however, they all utilize a fish paste in their cooking (called prahok in Khmer, pla ra in Thai and padaek in Lao), which is believed to be a Khmer influence as both Laos and Northeast Thailand historically was part of the Khmer Empire. With Vietnamese and Lao cuisine it shares the French influence as Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were all part of the French Indochina. Khmer dishes are less salty than Vietnamese food in general, and less sweet, sourer and more citrusy than South Vietnamese food. The ingredients and dishes of Mekong Delta's indigenous Khmer Krom, most notably spices (cardamom, cinnamon, star anise, clove, ginger, turmeric and ground coriander), curries and fermented food (such as mắm and mắm pò hóc). have influenced the cuisine of modern-day Southern Vietnam. Ingredients Fermented sauces In Khmer, a distinction is made between fermented seafood depending on its consistency and the ingredient. () is the general term for seafood fermented with a special technique and usually includes more solid pieces of the fermented ingredient, whereas prahok (ប្រហុក, ) and kapi (កាពិ, ) have more homogenous consistency than mam. is prepared by adding a mixture of salt, roasted red sticky