Where to eat in Kampot: an edited list for people who take food seriously

The thing about Kampot’s food scene is that it keeps surprising people who thought they knew what a small Cambodian provincial town would offer. A restaurant serving modern European food from a changing daily menu. A Lebanese kitchen where the owner makes the lavash bread himself every morning. A Khmer place two streets back from the river where the fish amok comes in a banana leaf and tastes nothing like the version the tourist restaurants serve.

None of these are famous. All of them are worth knowing.

This is an edited list, not a ranked one. It is organised by what you’re in the mood for rather than by a score out of ten, because the score-out-of-ten format produces rankings that are mostly useless. What matters is which place suits the evening you’re trying to have.

If you want the best dinner in town: Twenty-Three

Twenty-Three has been the word-of-mouth answer to “where should I eat in Kampot” since it opened in 2020, and the consensus has not shifted. It is a small modern European restaurant on Street 726 with a menu that changes based on what’s available at the market, a short wine list, craft beers, and a kitchen that genuinely knows what it is doing.

The room is intimate — a small indoor space with chequerboard flooring and a few outdoor courtyard tables. It is not designed to impress; it does not need to be. What arrives at the table does that work. The twice-baked cheddar soufflé with Kampot salt and pepper is a regular that has outlasted most menu rotations for good reason. On any given week the mains might include hand-rolled pasta with Kampot pepper cream, pan-seared seabass with Khmer herbs, crispy pork belly, or duck leg confit with tamarind glaze. Desserts are made in-house — the panna cotta is the one that gets mentioned most.

Prices are above the Kampot average and below what this food would cost anywhere in Europe. A starter, main, and dessert with a glass of wine runs $25–$35 per person. It is the most expensive dinner in town and also the best value for what arrives.

A few things to know: it is closed Monday and Tuesday. It opens at noon and runs until 9:30pm Wednesday through Sunday. Book ahead, particularly on weekends — the room is small and fills. Reservations via Facebook (23 Kampot) or by calling 088 607 9731.

One honest note from the expat community: the menu, while it rotates, keeps some dishes for a long time, so repeat visitors occasionally find less novelty than expected. This is a more relevant concern for residents than visitors. For a first dinner at Twenty-Three, it will not be an issue.

If you want Khmer done right: the fish amok question

The fish amok problem in Kampot is the same as everywhere in Cambodia: the version on most tourist menus is a gloopy yellow curry with coconut milk, overcooked and over-sweetened, served in a coconut shell bowl for effect. It is not what fish amok is.

Real fish amok is steamed in a banana leaf with a kroeung paste (lemongrass, galangal, turmeric, kaffir lime), coconut milk, and eggs that give it a custard-like consistency — delicate, aromatic, nothing like a curry. It should taste of the herbs and the fish together, not of sweetness or cornflour.

The places that do it properly in Kampot tend to be the family restaurants on the side streets back from the river, where the menu is in Khmer and the plastic chairs are squeezed close together and the woman running the kitchen has been making this dish since before most visitors were born. These places don’t have a single name to recommend — they change, they move, they don’t maintain a TripAdvisor presence. The way to find them is to walk two or three streets back from the riverfront, look for a place with Khmer families eating, and point at what the table next to you ordered.

Vanna Restaurant and Bar on the riverfront is the most-recommended mid-range Khmer option with an English menu that handles fish amok and lok lak well and does not over-tourist them. It is reliable, consistently reviewed, and the lok lak (stir-fried beef with black pepper and lime, served with a fried egg) is a useful benchmark for what the dish should be.

If you want a long evening with a view: Rikitikitavi

Rikitikitavi has the best location of any restaurant in Kampot: an upper-floor terrace with an unobstructed view west over the Praek Tuek Chhu toward the Elephant Mountains, facing directly into the sunset. At the right time of evening, in the right season, this view is the reason to come.

Happy hour runs from 5 to 7pm with 2-for-1 cocktails. The sunset peaks around 6pm depending on the month. The combination of these two facts means that from 5:30 to 6:30, the terrace is the most pleasant place to be in Kampot, and you should be there.

The food matches the setting rather than surpassing it. The menu runs Khmer and Western, with the loc lac as the consistent customer favourite — beef stir-fried with black pepper sauce and a fried egg, served with rice. It is not the most ambitious dish on the menu but it is the most reliably good one. The fish amok and the curries are solid. The Western options (burgers, pasta) are above average by local standards.

Prices are slightly above the Kampot mid-range — a main course runs $7–$12. It is worth it for the setting and the cooking, but it is not the choice if you want to spend as little as possible. Open daily from around 7am to 10pm.

If you want something in between: the middle ground

Aroma House on Street 722 is one of Kampot’s better-kept secrets and one of its most consistent. James and his partner have been running this Lebanese and Mediterranean kitchen for years, making everything from scratch daily: the lavash bread, the hummus, the falafel, the sauces. A chicken shawarma platter with salad, pickles, hummus, and bread runs $7. The hummus is genuinely good — the kind that makes you realise what the supermarket version has been pretending to be. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 11am to 9pm, on Street 722 south of the Durian Roundabout.

Tiger’s Tale is the one for a Sunday afternoon. The Sunday roast is a weekly event that fills the place with a mix of long-term expats and visitors who heard about it from their guesthouse — properly roasted meat, good gravy, and the particular pleasure of a traditional Sunday meal in a tropical setting. The rest of the week the kitchen runs pop-up specials and rotating menus that tend toward the hearty and unpretentious. Follow the Facebook page for the weekly schedule.

The Simple Things (also the breakfast pick from the morning guide) is worth returning to for lunch and an early dinner. The vegetarian and vegan menu is the most thoughtful in town for that category — not an afterthought, not a separate section, but the whole point of the kitchen. The avocado toast is famous for reasons that hold up. Everything is made with the same care as Aroma House’s approach: no shortcuts, no cans.

If you want to eat well for under $5: where the town actually eats

Kampot Food Street is the newest and most useful addition to the town’s eating landscape for anyone who wants to explore the local food culture without ordering from an English menu. It is a covered market of multiple stalls — Khmer barbecue, noodles, rice dishes, grilled meats, fresh juices — open in the evenings, bustling, cheap, and representative of how the town actually eats. A full meal here runs $2–$4. Go hungry, go with a willingness to point at what looks good, and don’t expect air-conditioning.

The riverside street food market along the river just past the old Governor’s House is the older version of the same impulse — open-air carts, small plastic chairs, dozens of choices, everything priced in the $1.50–$3 range. This is the Southeast Asian street food experience in its unmediated form, and it is better for being in a place where the tourist overlay is lighter than average.

The central market in the morning (covered in the breakfast guide) gives way to a different set of stalls by mid-afternoon: rice and fish plates, grilled pork, and fresh fruit served with salt and chilli. These are priced at $1–$2 and eaten by the people who live and work here.

A note on what to skip

The tourist-facing riverside restaurants in the busiest stretch north of the old bridge — the ones with the laminated menus in four languages, the fairy lights, and the pepper crab priced at three times what you’d pay in Kep — are not the answer to “where should I eat in Kampot.” The food is adequate. The price is inflated. The atmosphere is calibrated for people who arrived today and leave tomorrow.

That is not to say no riverside restaurant is worth eating at — Rikitikitavi is on the river and is genuinely good. The distinction is between places that have built a kitchen and a reputation, and places that have built a location and a menu. The former is worth seeking out. The latter is fine for a beer while you decide where to actually eat.

The short version

Kampot rewards eating your way through it slowly. The town is small enough that you can cover the places worth covering in a week and still find something new. The key is to leave the laminated menus alone and follow the cooking.