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 Traveller's Tales: Restaurants and eating places in Siem Reap, Cambodia
Look for the best places to eat in Siem Reap, Cambodia. You may read about recommended restaurants and food. Find out about local food and local dining customs. Also, you might want to read our
Angkor / Siem Reap city guide,
and Phnom Penh city guide.
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| J Morris |
04 February 2005 |
Stayed at Angkoriana - Siem Reap, Cambodia.
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Hotel Restaurant very good and reasonably priced. Seeing Hands massage in town is great! 1 hour massage for $4, and can walk to large selection of restaurants from there. Piano Bar is good cheap food.
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| A Mccullen |
30 January 2005 |
Stayed at Passaggio Boutique Hotel - Siem Reap, Cambodia.
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Moto-trailers and motorcycles are absolutely everywhere so you will have no problems in finding transport, though contact lens wearers, be warned - the roads are very very dusty! There are plenty of great restaurants around Siem Reap ranging from Khmer to Indian to French, or if you wanted to go local, you could always eat at one of the street stalls serving Khmer noodles, rice, and baguette sandwiches. We even saw fried beetles with garlic for those with a more adventurous palette! Although I only saw them being sold by one vendor on the East bank of the river, over the bridge from the Old Market.
There are loads of souvenir shops round the old market area as well as classy little boutiques that support local Cambodians like Rajana, Senteurs and Artisans D'Angkor which also had tours around their workshops if you wanted. The Khmer Kitchen is a gem - their amok is wonderful with the coconut milk made fresh (we could hear them grinding the coconuts!) and deservedly popular. It's tucked away in a small lane behind Bar Street so look out for its sign or you'll miss it! We also tried the Soup Dragon which serves a great pho (pronounced 'fur') noodle soup dish in the mornings and the Red Piano restaurant with international food and generous portions. Most of the restaurants have upstairs balcony seating, nice for the street views. The Blue Pumpkin cafe serves great pastries, breads and ice cream. If you wanted to visit some bars, there is 'Bar Street' with the very popular Angkor What?, Temple Bar, Buddha Lounge to name a few, and Linga bar just around the corner, a very trendy affair and SR's one and only gay bar.
One thing I would definitely recommend visitors go to is the Beatocello concert held every Friday and Saturday evening at the Jayavaraman VII pediatric hospital next to the Sofitel hotel. The founder and director, Dr. Beat Richner puts on informal concerts playing the cello (hence Beatocello) combined with talking about the hospital's activities. Their services are offered completely free and it is depends very much on donations. You can see that it is put to good use with world-class facilties having been built for the Cambodian children. Even if you can't give any money, you can give blood so I would urge visitors to support this project in either way.
If you hire a local guide, around lunchtime they will 'suggest' a Khmer restaurant for you to go to. As it was our first day, we thought why not? and were taken to a nice enough restaurant. We were the first customers, but one by one, we saw tour guides bringing in their guidees(?) until the whole restaurant was filled! It wasn't that the food was bad, it was alright but it was expensive by Siem Reap standards ($18 for three dishes) and we thought Khmer Kitchen and Soup Dragon were much much better. So insist that you go to a restaurant of your choice or just ask them to drop you off at the Old Market where you can walk around and pick for yourself where you want to eat. You'll spend less and get more authentic food!
There's a balloon ride that gives you a great view over Angkor Wat and Phnom Bakheng, $11 for 10 minutes but worth it! Would have been nice for sunset but book ahead because the tour groups often go for this option. There are also helicopter tours, I can't remember how much they were but it is very very expensive! Take a break in the middle of the day from touring the temples (we usually stopped from 12-2 or 3) because it was hot, hot, hot! However, if you can stand the heat, you'll be rewarded by an infinitely more peaceful wandering-round-the-temples experience! Have fun, we certainly did!
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| M Mok |
24 January 2005 |
Stayed at Passaggio Boutique Hotel - Siem Reap, Cambodia.
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Besides Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, Bayon... should also try the far-out places like Banteay Srei & Banteay Samre. Banteay Samre...less touristy... very serene... my favourite. Be prepared to do some climbing up Phnom Bakheng but it is worth the climb for the beautiful sunset lookout.
Must try Soup Dragon Restaurant for their Green Mango Salad & Vietnamese Spring Roll. Molly Malone is also good for their French onion soup, salads & desserts but have to wait quite awhile for the serving.
Le Grande Cafe has a beautiful balcony lookout upstairs. Have tried their Vietnamese food "Amok" over here. Quite good.
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| D Brickell |
24 January 2005 |
Stayed at Passaggio Boutique Hotel - Siem Reap, Cambodia.
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For our first day of visiting Angkor Wat and other temples we hired a driver and a guide. We paid $20 for the driver and another $20 for an English speaking guide for the day. (with an hour and a half break for lunch). Our guide took us to all the major sights of Angkor Wat, the Bayon and Angkor Thom area. One of the things we did, that was a lot of fun for us, was to take an elephant ride. Just outside the Angkor Thom south gate there is a group of elephants at a road-side facility. You can hire an elephant with a handler. The cost is $11. Our ride took us through the south gate into Angkor Thom along the jungle. Our ride lasted about a half hour. It was a great experience.
For the second day we didn't use a driver or guide, but hired a tuk tuk (mortorized rick-shaw) for the day for $10. We merely told our tuk tuk driver where we wanted to go and off we went. Our first stop was at Ta Prohm where we hired a guide for $4 for a 1 hour tour. This was very worthwhile as our guide showed us all the best locations to get good photographs as well as explaining some of the history. (The guides at this location are local young men who seem to hang out at the temple -- they do not have official guide badges, but are very knowledgeable). We also visited several lesser known places in the area that we spotted while driving through the Angkor Wat complex.
One of the best restaurants we ate at was the Chivit Thai. It is a Thai restaurant and the food was outstanding. The price was also very reasonable (Under $20 for dinner and beer). Another restaurant that had good food was the Foreign Correspondent's Club (FCC). However, it was more expensive than the Chivit Thai. In our opinion the food at Chivit Thai was better.
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| C Ryan |
23 January 2005 |
Stayed at Borei Angkor Hotel - Siem Reap, Cambodia.
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Compared with Phnom Penh Siem Reap is very laid back + friendly. Getting around is easy you can use your legs although it does get a bit hot walking everywhere! We used a tuktuk + our driver was Mr. Saleap - he is found outside Borei Angkor hotel, took us to the temples + basically everywhere else we wanted to go - look him up he is ultra reliable.
We liked Angkor What?, a bar where everyone crowds in good atmosphere everyone chatting away, dancing + having a good laugh - we also went to Laundry, a late drinking joint which unlike Martini had no women of the night!!
Restaurants we liked were Khmer kitchen + soup dragon.
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| S Chu chee louh |
06 January 2005 |
Stayed at Passaggio Boutique Hotel - Siem Reap, Cambodia.
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This time of the year (Jan 2005), siem reap is all dusty and full of tourists. Four days of visit starting with the ancient ruins were just nice and beyond words. The local guide book & 3D maps are available at hotels for free and they are full of information. Restaurants to visit: Blue Pumpkin (a must try) with it "white" decorated restaurant/cafe on the 2nd floor. Food served are fusion food and portion is big and nice. Their Banana youghut shake is just to my liking. Soup Dragon Restaurant (Opposite Blue Pumpkin). A variety of western, cambodian and vietnamese food served. Must trys - Vietnamese Spring Rolls, Cambodian Green Mango Salad, Cambodian Beef Fondu. Price reasonable.
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| M Wong |
06 January 2005 |
Stayed at Angkor Diamond Hotel - Siem Reap, Cambodia.
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Must visit the usual temples in Angkor and Bantay Srey - a little bit further out of town but worth the trip. The Landmine Victims Refuge is a sobering place to call in. Favourite restaurants in Siem Reap were Dead Fish Tower, Soup Dragon and IndoChine, the last a bit pricier but ambience made up for it.
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| L Liang |
04 January 2005 |
Stayed at Ta Prohm - Siem Reap, Cambodia.
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For a nice place to eat, boh pha hotel restaurant was very good...it was up the river about 10 minute walk from the hotel. It is about 10 dollars per person but it is a very nice restaurant and the food was very good! Do not go to la noria recommended by loney planet...the food was very bad. Be careful about tour guides as well...the hotel called a guide for us but his english was poor and accent difficult to understand. We had to pay him a lot just to ask him to leave after the initial 45minutes.
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| L Liu yu ping |
31 December 2004 |
Stayed at Princess Angkor Hotel - Siem Reap, Cambodia.
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If your schedule is tight, the city can be seen in two days, although we stayed three.
Even in winter, December, it is still very hot. Visit the temples in the early morning, and late afternoon.
Two very highly recommended restaurants - Viroth's and Madame Butterfly,
ambience and food at both is excellent. Hire a driver, $20 to $25 per day, but agree at the beginning. Our experience, with two drivers, they returned the next day. We told them where we wanted to go, and their response was to ask for $10.00 more. A must visit is the two locations of Artisans d Angkor, their products are made in Siem Reap. Most of what is sold in the markets comes from Thailand, China, and other countries (although they will tell you that it is Cambodian).
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| D Sedgeley |
13 December 2004 |
Stayed at Bopha Angkor - Siem Reap, Cambodia.
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In Siem Reap, try the Kampuccino Pizza restaurant for casual meals. Both local and western cuisine are first rate and inexpensive.
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