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Metro - "Where Hip Meets Phnom Penh"
You don't meet a "founding father" everyday - but I got lucky, and met one from Phnom Penh's nascent restaurant industry. Determined to make Metro Café a success, Aussie owner - Tom - is golden. Recognizing a void of restaurants outside backpacker joints or traditional Khmer, the former chef has identified a niche.
Metro's swanky yet hospitable atmosphere allows an eclectic crowd to enjoy one thing they share - a taste for modern cosmopolitan class. If trends exist for imitation, I hope Metro is no exception.
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Inflation makes rat Cambodia's other white meat
With rising world oil prices and restrictions on imports of pork and poultry, a nice port roast has become out of reach for many Cambodians, who have turned instead to the other white meat - rat - according to local media.
Local Khmer-language daily Kampuchea Thmey reported that the meat had become so sought after that rice farmers "in their hundreds" had set up sideline businesses catching table-ready rice fed rats for their meat.
Whereas a kilo of best quality rat meat went for around 50 cents two years ago, it now fetches up to 1.5 dollars, the paper reported.
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Australia's best blues live at the FCC
Cambodia can brace itself for a jolt of world-class boogie when two of Australia's most acclaimed blues acts play Cambodia in December.
The Backsliders,Australia's award-winning, all-star blues ensemble, will make their Cambodian debut when the band plays the FCC Angkor on December 7 and December 8 at the FCC Phnom Penh.
In addition to the Backsliders' two shows, New Zealand singer-songwriting powerhouse Paul Ubana Jones will play four shows at the FCC in December. Jones will play the FCC Angkor on December 10 and 11, and the FCC Phnom Penh on December 14 and 15.
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Best coffee in Cambodia?
Isabel Calvert loses no sleep in her quest to find the finest brew in Phnom Penh.
Wow! Best Coffee? What an assignment! Considering the extraordinary number of coffee spots in the cities, picking out the best coffee is a mammoth task. Here are a few humble offerings found in Phnom Penh.
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Friends in Need
Think of Friends and chances are you think of street kids and a great restaurant. But as founder Sebastien Marot explains, there's a whole lot more to Friends.
Sebastien Marot started Friends in 1994 when he was traveling through Cambodia. A French citizen on his way to Japan, an encounter with the street kids of Phnom Penh changed his direction in life and eventually, many of theirs too.
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Liquid Bar
Liquid Bar has really raised the stakes for interiors of shop-front style bars. With its polished concrete, gun-metal grey floor, chocolate leather seats, exposed tiled roof and well appointed and fabulously backlit bar (lots of real bubbles!), it really is a swish space indeed. You don't have to fight past the usually obligatory terrace furniture to get into the bar and once in you could swing a dead cat freely.
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K-West - "An American in Paris Heads to Phnom Penh"
Despite what my European and Aussie friends think, some people do appreciate a tinge of the American dining experience - and K-West is such a place. I mean, who is going to turn down a banana split when faced with one?
Lucky for my Aussie dining partner, K-West, pleasantly situated on the heavily trafficked corner of Sisowath Quay, does not pigeon-hole itself. It symbolizes a new Phnom Penh. A mixture of French, Khmer, and American cuisine, it capitalizes on layers of history. Feel like wonton soup followed by steak tartar and a brownie sundae? You got it.