Dinner at Sovanna in Phnom Penh

A description of dinner at Sovanna, our favorite restaurant in Phnom Penh. (So favorite that we fell into a rut: we ate at Sovanna four of the seven nights that we stayed in Phnom Penh. Bad, Bedbins.)

Sovanna is a populate Khmer restaurant known for its grilled meats. It is on a side street off of one of the major roads. On most nights, the entire street is taken up with the scooters, tuk-tuks and SUVs of the people eating there. Multiple parking attendants are employed to help the scooters in and out and make sense of the chaos.

We would step from our tuk-tuk and walk to the front. The restaurant, like most in Cambodia, is open to the elements. It’s three main rooms all front the street; at some point, the plastic chairs give way to scooter parking. Once seated, quite quick even though the place is mostly full, a “beer-girl” is usually the first person you work with. The Beer-girls are dressed in nice trim uniforms reflecting whichever brand they represent: Angkor, Anchor and Tiger are always present at Sovanna. Their job is to get you to drink as much of their brand’s beer as possible. They get a commission at the end of the evening from the total consumption. So, as soon as you’re seated, it is only a matter of moments before you can have a cold jug of beer sitting on your table, two low-ball glasses with giant chunks of ice, and the knowledge that those glasses will be consistently filled throughout the evening. As for our preferences, all three beers are great, but given that we’re in Cambodia and not Malaysia, we’ve been focusing on the Angkor and the Anchor (pronounced all frenchy-fied: an-shore).

The next thing to arrive is a plate of chilled vegetables. Cucumber slices, carrot slices, tomato slices, banana slices. These are eaten plain or with a dip made of lime juice, chili, garlic and pepper.

We then start with a small plate of grilled beef. This comes quickly since it is one of the most common orders. I have to ask the waiter for Prahak (Cambodian fish paste), to which the waiter gets to say: “You want Prahak?” with disbelief and joy on his face, and I get to say, “yes, please, it’s delicious” with joy on my face. I eat the beef by dipping it in the Prahak.

The menu is awesome. It is about as large as a Cheesecake Factory menu, but with such dishes as “Roasted Beef with Ants”, “Grilled bees“, etc. There’s a whole section of grilled and fried pig’s organs. Pages and pages of soups and noodles and vegetables.

Thus, we usually ask the manager for recommendations. We’ve gotten grilled corn, morning-glory in oyster sauce, various noodle dishes, a delicious papaya salad with mystery meat, spicy curries and other delicious things. The manager likes us. He welcomes us each time and gets a kick out of ordering food for us. Our last evening at Sovanna, he spent twenty or so minutes just hanging out and talking with us: he’d like to come to the States sometime, he thinks America is getting better every day now that Obama is president, he is wary of Chinese influence in Cambodia, he’s open to any kind of work doing marketing for American businesses in Phnom Penh.

While enjoying food and conversation, the atmosphere in Sovanna is alive. The Beer-girls are constantly refilling glasses and jugs. Vendors walk in off the street selling books, fruit, fried crickets, and flowers. Families are having a grand time, children are running around. On average, it seemed to us that there was a 70/30 mix of locals and tourists/ex-pats. The restaurant is really quite cheap (for tourists and ex-pats at least), you can have a filling dinner with two jugs of beer for under 10 dollars.

Our tuk-tuk driver is always waiting for us after dinner. So after paying the bill, we can stumble to the street, mount our chariot and very quickly roll our drunk full bellies into bed.

He's not actually that tall. I'm sitting.