Benable — create shareable lists of things you recommend!
E.g., products you love, local businesses, travel recs - you can add anything to a Benable list!
Light Fresh Meals I Craved After Weeks of Heavy Cambodian Street Food
32
items Two weeks into Cambodia, my stomach was begging for a break from fried noodles and heavy curries. If you're the type of traveler who hits a wall mid-trip and just wants a bowl of something green and clean — I spent a month sorting through menus so yo...
Sections
8
Phnom Penh Restaurants With Salads That Actually Fill You Up
Siem Reap Spots for When Temples Drain Every Ounce of Energy
Cambodian Soups That Feel Like a Warm Hug Without the Heaviness
Fresh Fruit Shake Stands Worth Hunting Down
Khmer Salads That Blew My Mind at Street-Food Prices
Restaurants in Kampot and Kep for Slow Coastal Eating
Phnom Penh Restaurants With Salads That Actually Fill You Up
Every salad I ordered the first week was just shredded cabbage and sadness. These four places changed my whole lunch game in the capital.
Grab a seat in the garden and order the pomelo salad — I was surviving on baguettes for days before this place reminded me vegetables exist. Perfect for anyone whose digestive system is staging a protest.
Backyard Cafe, Phnom Penh - Ulasan Restoran
Try the cold noodle bowl when it's 95 degrees and you can't face another hot plate. Walked in drenched in sweat, walked out feeling like a functioning human again. Portions are real, not decorative.
Artillery Calculator
Get the banana flower salad before you leave Phnom Penh — I almost skipped this place because the name sounded touristy, and I would have missed the freshest thing I ate all month. Students run the kitchen and they care.
Connecting Hands Training Cafe Cambodia
Use this as your reset meal after a night on Bassac Lane. Their açaí bowls and fresh rolls hit different when your body is 60% Angkor beer. For the friend who needs fruit and silence at 9am.
Good Vibes Cafe
Siem Reap Spots for When Temples Drain Every Ounce of Energy
After eight hours of climbing Angkor Wat in the heat, the last thing I wanted was a heavy curry. These places brought me back to life.
Snag a smoothie bowl and the rice paper rolls after your sunrise temple run — I was shaky and sunburned and this was exactly what my body needed. They open early, which matters more than you think at 7am in Siem Reap.
SisterSrey Cafe (@sistersreycafe) · Siem Reap
Switch to their green mango salad if you've been eating fried rice three meals a day. Sat here for two hours just cooling down and eating slowly like a person instead of a sweaty tourist inhaling food.
Mr Pou - Sweet Pudding And Coffee
Try their raw spring rolls — I went because someone on a forum said it was quiet, and they were right. Vegan menu, ceiling fans, zero chaos. For anyone who needs a meal without dodging tuk-tuk drivers.
Peace Cafe Vegetarian Restaurant
Keep this one bookmarked for your last night in Siem Reap. The lotus stem salad was so light I actually slept well for the first time in a week. Tiny place, no frills, just clean flavors and a fan pointed at your table.
Banlle Vegetarian Restaurant: Our Review of the Garden That
Cambodian Soups That Feel Like a Warm Hug Without the Heaviness
I didn't expect soup to be my savior in 90-degree weather, but Cambodian broths are thin, herby, and somehow cooling. These four bowls wrecked me in the best way.
Grab a bowl before 8am when the broth is freshest — this pork noodle soup is so light it barely registers as a meal until you realize you're full an hour later. Locals line up for a reason.
Phnom Penh Noodle Soup Recipe for Kuy Teav
Try the samlor korko if you want to understand Cambodian home cooking. Tastes like someone's grandmother made it with whatever was in the garden that morning. Not on every tourist's radar yet, so go now.
Samrub Samrub Thai
Use this for a nicer dinner without the food coma — their sour soup with river fish cleared my sinuses and my mood. Presentation is beautiful but the flavor is what kept replaying in my head for days.
Mahob Khmer Cuisine
Pair the light tamarind broth with sticky rice on their garden patio. Felt like eating in someone's backyard, except the someone is a trained chef. For travelers who want local food without pointing randomly at a menu.
LUM ORNG Farm to Table Restaurant
Fresh Fruit Shake Stands Worth Hunting Down
Spent my first three days buying overpriced smoothies from tourist cafés before I figured out the street shake stands are fifty cents and ten times better.
Toss out any plan to buy bottled juice and just point at the fruit you want — mango and passion fruit together was my daily order. Fifty cents, made in front of you, cold enough to reset your entire core temperature.
Street 51 and 136
Bring cash and try the dragon fruit shake — I was skeptical because it looks like a smoothie from a unicorn, but the taste is subtle and clean. Best consumed while sitting on a plastic stool pretending you live there.
Old Market
Swap your afternoon coffee for a soursop shake by the river. Watched the boats go by, spent forty cents, felt unreasonably happy. For anyone who needs to slow down and stop checking their phone for one hour.
Kampot: A Riverside Town Where Travellers Linger
Snag a mixed shake right when the market opens before the fruit sits out too long — the coconut and lime combo tasted like vacation distilled into a cup. Way better than anything I paid five bucks for at a café.
Battambang Night Market
Khmer Salads That Blew My Mind at Street-Food Prices
Nobody told me Cambodian salads would be this good. Crunchy, sour, spicy, fresh — nothing like the limp lettuce situation I was expecting.
Try this lime-dressed beef salad from any vendor with a crowd — the acid cuts through everything and my appetite came roaring back after days of feeling blah. Ask for extra herbs on top, trust me.
The Hirshon Cambodian Plea Sach Ko Beef Salad
Grab the green mango salad between swims — crunchy, sour, a little bit of dried shrimp funk. Ate this with my feet in the sand and briefly considered never going home. For the traveler who skips heavy beach lunches.
Koh Rong: Cambodia's Tropical Resort Island
Get the lime-cured seafood salad the second you arrive in Kep — it's basically ceviche's Cambodian cousin and it's absurdly fresh. Waited too long my first visit and they ran out. Don't repeat my mistake.
Kep Crab Market Guide
Ditch the fried options and hunt for the chicken salad stall in the back corner. Shredded chicken, mint, lime, crispy shallots — cost me a dollar and I went back three times in two days. Not fancy, just right.
The Complete Guide to the Markets of Phnom Penh.
Restaurants in Kampot and Kep for Slow Coastal Eating
After the chaos of Phnom Penh, Kampot felt like someone turned the volume down. The food matched — simple, fresh, no rush.
Use this as your first stop in Kampot — the fresh rolls and iced lemongrass tea set the tone for the whole town. Run by a social enterprise, so your lunch actually does something. Quiet garden seating that made me cancel my afternoon plans.
Epic Arts Café
Bring your appetite and pick your crab straight from the tank — steamed with Kampot pepper, it's the lightest and most satisfying seafood meal I had in all of Southeast Asia. Go at lunch before the tour buses show up.
Exploring Kep, Cambodia: What To Do, Crab Market & More
Pair the grilled squid with their herb salad right at sunset — I was expecting tourist-trap vibes but the food was genuinely light and well-seasoned. Waterfront table, cold drink, zero regrets. Worth the slightly higher price tag.
Keppel Bay Sailing Club
Swing by for their fish amok steamed in banana leaf — lighter than the coconut-heavy versions everywhere else. Sat on the riverbank patio and a breeze actually hit my face for the first time in weeks. Small menu, everything lands.
Nagaland House
Vegetarian and Vegan Spots That Don't Taste Like Deprivation
Finding plant-based food in Cambodia was easier than expected, but finding plant-based food that actually tasted exciting took some digging.
Toss together your own bowl from their bar and load up on the pickled vegetables — I was craving crunch and acid after too many soft, fried things. Cheap, fast, and exactly what a wilting vegetarian needs mid-trip.
Ojas Vegan & Vegetarian Eatery
Try the morning glory stir-fry with tofu — sounds boring, tastes anything but. Garlic, chili, a squeeze of lime, done. Walked in tired of explaining I don't eat meat, walked out feeling seen. Staff actually gets it.
Lotus Bar Siem Reap
Keep this in your back pocket for when you want a meal that looks like it belongs on someone's Instagram but actually fills you up. Their coconut curry bowl is light enough to eat at noon without wanting a nap after.
Bliss Botanica Cambodia
Swing through for their jackfruit tacos — weird on paper, completely works in practice. Battambang doesn't have many veggie-forward spots so this one felt like finding water in a desert. Friendly staff, decent coffee, real portions.
10 Restoran Terbaik di Battambang
Breakfast Spots for Mornings When You Cannot Face Another Fried Egg
Hotel breakfast buffets in Cambodia follow a formula: fried egg, white toast, instant coffee. By day four I was scouring Google Maps at 6am like a desperate person.
Swap your hotel breakfast for their chia pudding and cold brew — I literally packed my bag and walked twenty minutes in the heat because the alternative was another rubbery fried egg. Worth every sweaty step.
Best Cafes for Remote Work in Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Get the num banh chok before 9am — fermented rice noodles with a light fish-based green curry sauce that locals eat for breakfast. Sounds intense, tastes clean and refreshing. Changed my whole understanding of morning food.
JOMNO
Bring your laptop and order the yogurt granola bowl — it's a chain so it won't win any authenticity awards, but when you need something predictably light and the wifi works, you stop being a snob real fast.
BROWN Coffee | Phnom Penh City Center - X
Snag a table before the brunch crowd hits and order the fruit plate with lime and chili salt. Fresh papaya, mango, dragon fruit — tasted like the tropics finally showed up on my plate instead of just in the humidity. For early risers who want flavor ...
Auberge du Soleil, Kampot | 2026 Updated Prices, Deals