Where to Eat in Kampot: Best Breakfast, Restaurants, and Street Food

Samaki Market is the place for a traditional Khmer breakfast. The food stalls sit inside the main market, mixed in with clothing shops, goldsmiths, hardware stalls, and the usual morning crush. It is busy, mostly Khmer-speaking, and you may have to squeeze onto a bench. Once you do, breakfast is usually about a dollar:

• Bye Sack Cheruk: pork and rice

• Baw-Baw: rice porridge with chicken

• Baw-Baw-Saw: rice porridge with salted fish

• Kuy Tiew: noodle soup

• Bye Chah: fried rice

  

The Belgian bread cart sits by the river, just past Starbucks, in front of Vanna Restaurant. It is the place for pain au chocolat, almond croissants, and raisin rolls. They open at 7:30am and can sell out quickly.

Go early.

Tara is a short walk out of town, near Cafe Espresso, and easy to spot: there is usually a whole cow roasting on the street corner.

It is hugely popular with Cambodians but can be daunting at first. The meal is easy once you know the routine. Sit down, flag down a waiter, and order beef by weight. Half a kilo is 30,000 riel and enough for two people. The beef comes cut into small pieces, with vegetables, dipping sauces, and condiments on the side. Mix the sauce how you like it, then wrap a piece of beef in cabbage with a few vegetables and dip it.

The beer is self-serve. Take what you want from the table of cold cans and pay for the empties at the end.

Reatrey Oyster is the local seafood pick. It is not polished for tourists. Go for oysters, BBQ, grilled squid, mussels, crab fried rice, or seafood fried rice.

Much of the menu is cook-it-yourself. A small gas cooker comes to the table with butter, raw seafood, and vegetables, and you cook it as you go. The patio gets busy, service can be blunt when the place is full, and the meal may take a little pointing at the menu.

If you want Cambodian food in a more familiar restaurant setting, start with 1960. Chef Darin came from Phnom Penh and went back through old Cambodian cookbooks to bring back dishes that most restaurants stopped serving. The fish amok is among the best in town.

The name comes from the 1960s Cambodian pop music playing through the room. The menu can get more adventurous too. Edible ants and tarantula are on the list.

Twenty-Three is European fine dining at Kampot prices. Back home, a meal like this would be for special occasions. Here, it is affordable enough to make part of the trip. The menu is small, changes often, and leans modern European with local ingredients. The twice-baked cheddar soufflé and hand-rolled pasta are the dishes people remember, and Kampot pepper features through the menu. Bread is made in-house.

Book ahead. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

Go to Rikitikitavi around sunset. The terrace sits above the river, looking west toward the Elephant Mountains, and happy hour runs from 5 to 7pm with 2-for-1 cocktails.

The sunset view is the best in town. The loc lac is a customer favorite.

At first glance, Bob Marley’s looks like every other Cambodian-Western fusion restaurant in Kampot. Locals know it as one of the best Khmer-BBQ places in town. The BBQ is run by a local woman who has been at this grill for years. The beef kebab, pork ribs, and roast chicken are local favorites.

The menu is extensive and the portions are generous.

Word has been getting around about Trattoria da Rasy. It is down a little side street off the Salt Workers roundabout, in the kind of place you would walk past if nobody told you to stop. No frills, no flash, just some of the best handmade pasta in Kampot from a tiny street food setup with a few tables. Even Italians have been known to say it is pretty good, which is about as high as praise gets.

Come for tortellini, ravioli, gnocchi, and other pasta dishes made by hand in front of you and served with her homemade sauces. In the same space, Mama’s Chicken does some of the best roast chicken in Kampot.