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Name: Le Terroir 69
Address: No.25 Street 302, BKK1, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Telephone: 097-8619367
Opening hours:
Cuisine: Occidental, mostly beef dishes with a Gallic touch.
Image:
URL: https://www.facebook.com/leterroirphnompenh/#
Reservation URL:
Menu URL:
Rating: 5

Excellent, well-shaded outdoor-only restaurant with lovely landscaping to insulate diners from the street. Steak Frites was $7, delicious. Cook and owner is French expat who would probably literally cut his wrists in front of you if he thought anyone wasn't having a good time. Meats are fresh-flown and antibiotic free. One piece of advice: Order your steak one degree of done-ness further along than you really want it (e.g., Medium instead of Medium-rare).

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Name: Phkar Romyool Cafe & Restaurant, Le Grand Palais Boutique Hotel
Address: No 16, Street 130, Sangkat Phsar Thmey I, Khan Daun Penh, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Telephone: 855 (0)23 966 699
Opening hours: 0600 - 2300
Cuisine: Mostly Asian with nicely festive Thai and Indian dishes
Image:
URL: http://www.legrandpalaishotel.com/index ... estaurant/
Reservation URL: [email protected]
Menu URL:
Rating: 4
Prices are good if perhaps a bit on the high side for the fare. Curries $8-$10. Excellent lamb and very good seafood. Outdoor seating is very comfortable despite the decidedly urban milieu. Indoor seating is posh, edging toward stuffy, but live local music-and-dance performances accompany some settings. Excellent staff.

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Name: Andart Room Seafood Restaurant
Address: No. 207, Street 51, BKK1, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Telephone: 023-988-338
Opening hours:
Cuisine: Seafood dishes with mostly Asian theme, some land-based proteins as well
Image:
URL: http://andartrorm.com/
Reservation URL: http://andartrorm.com/
Menu URL: http://andartrorm.com/menu/
Rating: 4

Come with a plan to avoid over-spending on what's still very good food. The menu is a *bit* overwhelming, in just that peculiar way that can have a person heaving unconsidered index fingers at supplemental dishes after miscalculating on the size or style of the first choice. Rice is extra. Well-patronized at lunchtime, especially with locals. Oysters, prawns, garlic pork ribs all very good.

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Name: 54 Langeach Sros
Address: No. 15A Street 178, Phnom Penh
Telephone: 017 455 454
Opening hours:
Cuisine: Cambodian tableside barbecue
Image:
URL:
Reservation URL:
Menu URL:
Rating: 5 if that's your thing. Otherwise...?

I enjoyed the experience of Cambodian tableside barbecue a *lot* more than enjoyed the food -- but that doesn't have to be reflective of the restaurant as much as it might just be how my own tastes and expectations are wired. Personally I found it fatty and not terribly flavorful and kind of not worth the effort. Perhaps worth a try, just to check the box, and then if your experience is like mine, there's no need to go back. One cautionary note: Order two entrees at once because if you order one, and it's not enough, you won't really be all that enthused about the second one by the time it's ready. Also, wear long sleeves. The butter or oil or whatever it is from the barbecue *does* spatter, and some of it *does* get on the persons sitting nearest to it.

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Name: Mok Mony
Address: No. 63c Street 294, BKK1, Phnom Penh
Telephone: 095 970 861
Opening hours:
Cuisine: Cambodian through-and-through
Image:
URL: http://www.mokmony.com/
Reservation URL:
Menu URL: http://www.mokmony.com/food-menu/
Rating: 5 for commitment, 4'ish for the actual food

Mok Mony is a fun place and the prices aren't unreasonable, especially for BKK1. But the best part about eating there is, in its way, also the biggest strike against the place -- namely that the waiter begins by asking if you've been there before and, if you say no, he proceeds to explain an elaborate "no questions asked" return policy for the food, including a detailed explanation of how the goal of the restaurant is for everyone to sample things they haven't tried before, and a disclaimer that any returned entrees are used to feed local people in need. It's wonderful and, somehow at the exact same time, it's also more than a little over-the-top, not to say pretentious and maybe even insufferable. Perhaps it's the delivery, which makes it sound like these guys walk around in a state of perpetual indignation that they haven't yet been canonized or at the very least put on the front cover of The Guardian. My advice is to tell them that you *have* been there before, and that you know the drill, and use this review to back-fill all the stuff you'll miss in the process, if you care that much.

The food is good here but the menu is decidedly tilted away from savor and toward things that have a sweeter, or at least sweet-and-sour palette about them. I asked my server (and the presumed owner of the place) about this, and he told me that this taste spectrum is ubiquitous in Khmer food, but that hasn't been my experience at the very edgy local places with the metal tables and the plastic stacking chairs, at all.

Get the long ribs, or the Lok Lak. The long ribs take quite a while but they're good and worth the wait.

Good work Dave. I don't think I've heard of any of those places.

Now, can you just go back to the above establishments and get the 'Images'. Please. Thanks.

I actually have images from one or two of them but I couldn't figure out how to "assign" (as it were) a given image to a given segment of the post. Won't they all just be piled up at the bottom?

Username Taken wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2017 6:02 pm Good work Dave. I don't think I've heard of any of those places.

Now, can you just go back to the above establishments and get the 'Images'. Please. Thanks.

An estimate on an average cost of a meal would also be useful.

And thanks Dave and Roz for posting some reviews. We all like to try something new from time to time.

Steak frites at Le Terroir was $7. Curries at Le Grand Palais $8-$10. Andart is probably escapable for $10-$12 per person, all told. The tableside barbecue place ran $4-$6 per dish, but one dish didn't cut it for me. Mok Mony is $10 plus drinks.

Dangerous Dave wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2017 6:15 pm I actually have images from one or two of them but I couldn't figure out how to "assign" (as it were) a given image to a given segment of the post. Won't they all just be piled up at the bottom?

You should upload the images one at a time. Yes, the image url will be at the bottom, but you cut and paste that into the appropriate restaurants "Image: " space.

Be sure to cut not copy. Else you'll have images in the reviews as well as again at the bottom.

excellent info thanks Dave

I've never heard of any of those places other than Le Terroir, and I was always too freaked out to go to a place with a name like that. Somehow it always reminds me of guillotines and whatnot.

It's the one of these that I'd be most likely to go back to, soonest. Really terrific.

Really terrific.

I'm terrified enough already.


Somehow the name reminded me of this short-lived venture:

Khmer Rouge Cafe Closed by Government

by Yun Samean | October 3, 2005

Phnom Penh’s recently opened Khmer Rouge-theme restaurant, which promised to give diners a taste of life in Cambodia under the Pol Pot regime, was shut down by gov­ernment officials on Saturday, of­ficials said.

Tourism Minister Lay Prohas said Sunday that L’histoire Cafe, lo­cated across the street from the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, was closed because it lacked a pro­per restaurant license. Vowing to keep it closed, Lay Prohas said the restaurant was in poor taste and his­torically inaccurate.

“The cafe owner exploited the souls of Cambodians who were killed,” Ly Prohas said. “The res­taurant confuses Cambodians and tourists because the restaurant serves porridge—during the Khmer Rouge, there were no res­taurant and there was no porridge to eat,” he said.

“Cambodia is a free market coun­try, but the restaurant is so bi­zarre that we cannot allow it.”

The restaurant, which opened about two weeks ago, was akin to a promotion for the Khmer Rouge re­gime, one that gives young people a more positive impression of the 1975-1979 era than that era de­serves, Lay Prohas added. “The young Cambodian generation doesn’t need that kind of cafe,” he said.

Five waitresses lounging on the floor of the L’histoire Cafe on Sun­day afternoon said they were now unemployed unless the restaurant is allowed to reopen. At night, they had doubled as traditional Khmer masseuses, but the La Cigale Bleue massage parlor which shared the same building as the res­taurant has also been closed, they said.

The waitresses said that the business was not intended to denigrate the memory of the more than 1 million victims of the regime, but had an educational quality.

“I am glad I got to experience the Khmer Rouge regime by serving the customers. I didn’t know what the Khmer Rouge served peo­ple to eat before,” said waitress Noy Eang, 20.

Owner Hakpry Sochivan, 24, said Sunday he was surprised and saddened to learn that the Min­is­try of Tourism wanted his cafe closed permanently. The eight mu­nicipal officials who visited him Saturday had only said it was to be closed temporarily, he said.

“My cafe is not too extreme,” he said. “The government always airs ‘The Killing Fields’ [movie] on TV every Jan 7 and this film shows killing. Why does the gov­ern­ment allow the film and not this cafe?” he asked.

“My cafe is a little bit strange, but it is not 100 percent inappropriate,” he said, adding that he worried about the livelihoods of his eight employees.

https://www.cambodiadaily.com/archives/ ... ent-49989/