Best Restaurants in Phnom Penh (2026)

Phnom Penh’s restaurant scene has been through a churn since the pandemic — beloved institutions closed, whole food streets reshuffled, and a confident new generation of Khmer kitchens took their place. The result in 2026 is the best eating the capital has ever offered, if you know which addresses are current. These are the ones that are.

Royal Khmer and Fine Dining

• Malis — chef Luu Meng’s grande dame on Norodom Boulevard, the restaurant that invented Cambodian fine dining when it opened in 2004. A courtyard with a fish pond, a menu of some hundred dishes collected from across the provinces, and the city’s definitive fish amok. Open breakfast through dinner; book for evenings.
• Kravanh — behind an understated entrance hides the city’s most elegant take on royal Khmer cuisine: refined palace recipes and regional dishes you’ll rarely see elsewhere (the frog braised in tamarind is the sleeper hit). Mains around $8–12 — fine-dining polish at bistro prices.
• Labaab — the modern one: inventive, beautifully plated Khmer cooking in a relaxed contemporary room. The shrimp spring rolls and signature amok justify the above-average bill.
• Restaurant Le Royal — inside Raffles Hotel Le Royal, all chandeliers and hand-painted ceilings, serving French fine dining alongside Khmer royal cuisine. This is the special-occasion room, and the colonial time-capsule experience is half the point.

Everyday Khmer: The Local Favourites

• Khmer Surin — a BKK1 institution in a plant-draped wooden house: fish amok for about $5.50, beef lok lak around $6, and the atmosphere of dining in someone’s antique-filled home.
• Eleven One Kitchen — eco-minded Khmer cooking (filtered water, no MSG, minimal plastic) with branches in BKK1 and Toul Tom Poung. The stir-fried squid with green Kampot pepper is the order.
• “72” Restaurant — near the Russian Market, the real thing: home-style stews and sour soups for $2–3 a bowl, no English menu theatrics.
• Kinin — modern num pang (Cambodia’s baguette sandwich); the crispy pork version is the best $5 lunch in the Russian Market quarter.

The International Standouts

Comfort food between Khmer meals, in rough order of buzz: Pizza 4P’s (the cult Japanese-Vietnamese pizza brand, riverside and BKK1 branches), Le Langka (proper French bistro cooking in BKK1), Sumatra (Indonesian rendang worth crossing town for, at Russian Market prices), and 306 Wagyu for a blow-the-budget steak night.

Street Food and Markets

The capital’s best meals still cost under two dollars, eaten on plastic stools: num banh chok breakfasts, market food courts, riverside night stalls. That’s a guide of its own — Phnom Penh street food, and exactly where to find it. The short version: Russian Market’s food ring at lunch, Orussey Market for the fearless, the night market for an easy first evening.

Know Before You Book

• Geography in one line: BKK1 is the leafy embassy quarter (Khmer Surin, Le Langka, Pizza 4P’s), Toul Tom Poung/Russian Market is the indie food neighbourhood (“72”, Kinin, Sumatra), and the riverside is views and colonial atmosphere (Le Royal, plus the rooftop bars for before or after).
• A note on the training restaurants: the famous social-enterprise addresses Friends and Romdeng have closed, moved and partially re-emerged in new forms since the pandemic — check their current Facebook pages before building an evening around them rather than trusting older guides (ours included, eventually — this is a fast-moving city).
• Reservations only really matter at Malis, Le Royal and 306 Wagyu. Everywhere else, walk in.
• Budget: $2–6 local, $7–15 mid-range, $25+ fine dining — the full picture is in the Cambodia budget guide.

Two days in the capital? Here’s how to spend 48 hours in Phnom Penh around these meals.