Malis restaurant on Norodom Boulevard has hung Nak Noy's paintings on its walls. Entry is free, for diners and passers-by alike. On opening night, the artist painted live among the tables.

Fashion stylist, editor, PR specialist, model and a followed voice in Phnom Penh, Shasne Suleimanova knows the capital’s good tables. She sat down at Topaz to try the business lunch. Fish and seafood lifted with spices, a creamy dessert, a cup of coffee: she left with a very good memory of it. We met a food lover who admits a soft spot for French cuisine.

This incredible dish is made with Cambodian fermented fish, kroeng, minced pork, pea eggplant, chili and coconut milk. It’s a true signature

At Malis in Phnom Penh, the saraman beef is cooked very slowly in coconut cream, with a special kroeung and peanuts. It is listed at just 21 dollars on the menu of the Norodom Boulevard restaurant.

Coconut pearls are a dessert made from glutinous rice flour, sometimes with wheat starch or corn flour added.

The British chef is opening his first Gordon Ramsay Burger in Southeast Asia, in Phnom Penh. The restaurant will sit at the top of JS Tower, which will also house the region’s first Planet Hollywood Hotel. JS Group, the developer, announced the project on 14 October. It has not given an opening date.

Num Kom is a traditional rice cake made from simple ingredients such as glutinous rice flour with palm sugar, grated coconut and toasted...

Looking for something new and exotic to add to your cooking? Look no further than the flavours of Cambodian cuisine. Sweet, salty, spicy, sharp: Cambodia offers a mix of tastes found nowhere else.

Geographical indication since 2010, EU protection since 2016: Kampot pepper is one of the rare products the world agrees on. Featuring the KPPA and Malis restaurant.

Marennes-Oléron oysters, beef carpaccio, Mekong lobster: at Topaz in Phnom Penh, the French menu stays close to the original. Business Lunch offer runs through September.

Among the pleasures of a stay at Kep West, dinner at Crab & Co ranks high. Sam Taroth took a seat one evening at the resort's seafront restaurant. Sophy Ouch, Food & Beverage Manager, welcomed her at the table as the house's best-selling dish arrived: a long wooden board of grilled fish and seafood, all landed fresh on the Kep coast.

How to make samlor kako, the traditional Cambodian soup with Khmer kroeung, prahok, toasted rice, pumpkin, green papaya and long beans

In October, the executive chef of Malis Siem Reap will join a Cambodian delegation at SIAL Paris, one of the world's largest professional food industry events. He will present a Khmer cuisine built around local products, including Kampot pepper, palm sugar, mango and cashew nuts.

Born in Windsor, Ontario, to Cambodian refugee parents, Chanthy Yen learned to cook on the floor of his grandmother's kitchen. He has since won Top Chef Canada, cooked for Justin Trudeau, and opened Touk, his Cambodian restaurant, in Vancouver. A portrait of a chef who has put Khmer cooking front and centre.

VIPs, influencers and food lovers gathered this week around a five-course menu set to officially join the à la carte selection in October. At the stove: Italian chef Fabrizio Aceti, flown in specially to present his newest creation.

In Cambodia, festive meals almost always include a dish made with fresh rice vermicelli (នំបញ្ចុក [nom bânh-chok]), served with plenty of raw vegetables (អន្លក់ [ân-luk]) and accompanied by a fairly thick, coconut-milk-based soup, most often containing flaked freshwater fish and seasoned with numerous spices. The soup resembles a liquid curry. One of the most popular versions of this dish is called "nam-ya" (ណាំយ៉ា) or "nam-ya curry" (ការីណាំយ៉ា).

Forget prahok. If there's one Cambodian dish capable of throwing off even adventurous eaters, it's nhoam sdao — a salad built entirely around bitterness, made with the young leaves and flower buds of the neem tree, known in Khmer as sdao. Unlike amok or lok lak, this dish never tries to charm you on first taste: it has to be learned. And that's exactly what makes it one of the most revealing dishes in Khmer cuisine.

He left a career in finance for New York kitchens, before founding Hem and Her in Richmond, Virginia, and becoming the first chef-in-residence at VCU's Institute for Contemporary Art. Through his pop-ups and his signature cookies, Santana Hem, the son of Cambodian refugees, reinvents his mother's cooking and carries, dish by dish, the memory of the Khmer diaspora in the United States.

Grilled at a street stall, dried on a rural market table, or simmered into a sour soup, snake has long been part of the diet for some Cambodians, particularly around the Tonlé Sap. But behind this quiet culinary habit lies one of the largest wildlife harvests on the planet — and mounting pressure on a resource scientists increasingly consider unsustainable.

Born in Cambodia and raised in France from the age of three, Tomy Gousset has become one of the most endearing chefs on the Parisian food scene. At the helm of three addresses in the French capital — Tomy & Co, Hugo & Co and Marso & Co — he cultivates a generous bistronomic cuisine, built on vegetables he grows himself and on a career path that was never a straight line.

From the rice paddies of the Tonlé Sap to the smoking stalls of Skun, all the way to the fine-dining tables of Siem Reap, Cambodia has cultivated a singular relationship with insects for centuries. Neither a sideshow curiosity nor a mere relic of famine, Khmer entomophagy tells a story of resilience, craft and, increasingly, science. A deep dive into a tradition that may yet help feed the future.

Come evening, wicker baskets and steaming pots show up on nearly every street corner in Phnom Penh. Inside: duck eggs that aren't quite what they seem. Pong tia koon tends to catch visitors off guard — but for most Cambodians, it's just a good evening snack, nothing more dramatic than that.

Behind the great classics of Khmer sweets — num ansom, num kom, kralan — hides a quieter dessert whose story reaches back to a Chinese imperial envoy sent to observe the Khmer Empire at its height. Ta guan, a pudding of yellow mung beans served in a clear tapioca syrup, appears in no tourist guide. It passes on quietly, kitchen to kitchen.

From Kyoto to Boeung Keng Kang, ceremonial Japanese green tea powder has taken over Phnom Penh's trendiest cafés in just a few seasons.