Siem Reap : Lacquer & Textures, A Night of Art and Flavor

Editorial team
8 hours ago
4 min read

On Thursday, April 30, 2026, Mouhot’s Dream restaurant at the Sofitel Angkor invites its guests to a singular evening, suspended between matter and taste, between artisanal gesture and culinary creation. An exceptional dinner signed by two Erics, two artisans of excellence: Eric Stocker, master lacquerer, and Eric Berrigaud, the hotel’s executive chef.

From left to right: Eric Berrigaud, the hotel’s executive chef, and Eric Stocker, master lacquerer

There are evenings where time evaporates slowly like mist. Where one enters a restaurant as one enters a museum, and leaves the table as one leaves a gallery, the mind still vibrating with intertwined images and flavors. This is exactly what “Lacquer & Textures” promises, the event dinner imagined by the Sofitel Angkor Phokeethra Golf & Spa Resort in Siem Reap.

It all begins in the grand Mouhot’s Dream salon, transformed for the occasion into an ephemeral “mini museum.” Trays with ink-like reflections, bowls with silent curves, panels of hypnotic depth—the works of Eric Stocker unfold, mute and sovereign, even before one sits down at the table. A visual aperitif, before the one for the palate.

Eric Stocker: The man who whispers to the sap

It all began for him at sixteen, at the Guimet Museum, under the guidance of a great master.

“I learned the craft of lacquering like one learns a language,” he confides simply.

An ancient language—the earliest known lacquer dates back 7,000 years, in Japan—but one that Stocker speaks today with a fluency still rare in the West.

After years restoring Asian furniture for the Mobilier National, it was the European Union that sent him to Cambodia in 1998 to revive an entire lost industry: sap harvesting, training lacquerers, and launching workshops. In 2008, he created his own team in a small Siem Reap workshop and has never truly left.

Today, 80% of his production heads to the United States—the East Coast, the West Coast, Art Deco enthusiasts from the 1920s-1930s who find in his lacquers the elegant sophistication of the Empire State Building and grand ocean liners. He also creates for luxury yacht interiors in China, for great French houses, and regularly exhibits his textures at Shanghai boat shows. Paravents, headboards, coffee tables, tableware—his vocabulary is vast, his technique inexhaustible.

“We’re always sought after through our specialties,” he says without fanfare. “It’s been fifty-two years, and it outlasts fashions.”

The humble formula says it all. Stocker doesn’t chase trends—it’s they that end up catching up to him.

Eric Berrigaud: Brittany at the Khmer gods’ hotel

In Carnac, Brittany, Eric Berrigaud grew up without cooking being a family affair. It’s a strictly personal vocation, fueled by a tour of France’s starred houses—from Biarritz to Paris, from Paris back to Brittany. “When you work with passion, you don’t count your hours,” he says. A declaration that, from a chef, sounds less like resignation than privilege.More than twenty-five years ago, he was asked to join the Sofitel Silom in Bangkok in forty-eight hours, from the Caribbean. He said yes.

Southeast Asia hasn’t let him go since. Singapore, the Maldives, Vietnam, Laos—before setting down his knives in Siem Reap, where he has officiated at the Sofitel Angkor for eight years, overseeing several dining outlets, including Mouhot’s Dream and the Citadel.He’s the one who first had the idea for this collaboration.

“I’m interested in pairing disciplines that don’t always cross paths,” he explains.“Eric is an artist. We need to showcase him. Use his trays and plates to create something sublime.”

And since Stocker is from Nantes, the conclusion was obvious: he will prepare his own beurre blanc, the flagship sauce of a city and its culture.

An evening at the frontier of arts

The dinner will begin with a half-hour cocktail, served around Eric Stocker’s lacquered trays. Then comes the artist’s personal presentation—a rare moment where he will share the secrets of his craft: the materials, centuries-old techniques, the inspirations guiding each piece.“Lacquer is above all patience and precision,” he sums up.

“Each layer must dry before the next. You can’t rush it.”Next, the dinner in three acts, imagined by Berrigaud to echo, in the kitchen, the depths and contrasts of lacquer. Each dish is conceived like a piece in an exhibition—a dialogue between eye and palate, where Stocker’s bowls and trays become the stage. And at the heart of this dinner, that exceptional moment: the artist will don the chef’s toque and prepare his Nantais beurre blanc himself, this classic of French gastronomy reimagined in a frame of lacquer and light.

Estelle Legrand, architect of the invisible

Behind this event is a young woman who doesn’t appear on the poster, but without whom nothing would happen: Estelle Legrand, 29, from Nancy, Marketing & Communications Manager at the Sofitel Angkor for nearly three years. She’s the one who weaves the links between the two Erics, who imagines the scenography, who builds the visible and invisible narrative of the evening.

“I visit Eric Stocker’s workshop regularly, and each time I’m surprised by everything they do,” she confides.

Her role goes far beyond traditional communication: she scouts artists—mostly Cambodian, whose talent often remains too discreet—designs rotating exhibitions in the hotel lobby, and ensures art is present in every corner of the space: from hand-blown champagne glasses alongside exhibited works, to pieces hung in rooms and placed in bars.

The brand may have changed its slogan—from “C’est magnifique” to the more contemporary “'Where life lives' with a French Zest”—but the spirit remains intact: making Sofitel Angkor a living space, carried by creativity and French hospitality. “Working with artists is something I truly enjoy,” she says, and the enthusiasm rings true.

See, taste, feel

“Lacquer & Textures” is not just a gastronomic dinner. It’s an invitation to slow down, to look at a spoon differently, to wonder how many layers of craftsmanship cover the bowl to which you bring your lips.It’s the meeting of two forms of French excellence practiced far away, far from Paris but never far from rigor. A

nd it’s, perhaps, proof that true luxury isn’t in opulence—it’s in the attention to detail, in the time given to each gesture, in the conviction that beauty and taste can, together, say something true.