1$ Tapas night at Ivy Guesthouse is hard to beat
Siem Reap gets no respect. It’s true, it’s a western enclave. There isn’t much to see in town, and it exists mostly as a basecamp for Angkor Wat. And if you’re looking for immersion in Cambodian culture, this isn’t where you want to be. But having said all of that, it’s wrong to conclude, as so many people do, that Siem Reap isn’t “real” or is somehow inauthentic. Siem Reap is very much a real city, albeit a heavily westernized one. I say that because there are plenty of places in the world where people live and work that are very much like Siem Reap. We know, because we used to live in, and still love, one such place.
To us Siem Reap felt like the Hoboken of South East Asia. Now that probably doesn’t mean anything to anyone who hasn’t lived in our former city, but suffice it to say, Siem Reap felt a bit like home to us.
There are bars and bakeries; banks and brewers; laundromats, restaurants, grocery stores, pharmacies, clothing stores, doctor’s offices and optometrists, all within an easy walk. Said another way, there’s everything anyone needs to live a normal life, right in town.
That’s very different from the typical chotchky and t-shirt shop bedazzled tourist town. This place has a real life to it.
Oh, and also, we ate better in Siem Reap than anywhere else in Cambodia. And when I say better, I don’t mean to say we ate exclusively authentic Cambodian food. What I mean is that the dishes we had here were tastier than anything else we ate while in Cambodia, “authentic” or otherwise.
A couple of our favorites include:
The Ivy Guesthouse
This has to be the best math ever: 4 tapas + 2 deserts + 8 drinks = $14
Every Friday the Ivy Guesthouse runs a special where everything on the menu is just $1, including drinks. It’s all tapas, but the menu is quite large, the portions generous, and the food surprisingly excellent. Where Ivy really impressed us is with their attention to detail. Each dish had little extra flourishes that seemed to go way above and beyond what you’d expect for a place plating $1 tapas.
The vegetable samosas were served with a delightful mint yogurt dipping sauce. The fried sweet potatoes, meanwhile, came with a nicely spiced and terrifically complementary mayonnaise-based sauce. A dish of tender beef fillets and crisp beans had its own garlic soy sauce. And marinated grilled fish medallions were served on sautéed morning glory. Each dish seemed carefully crafted, and every flavor worked really well together.
The mixed drinks weren’t such a hit. At $1 each they’re a great bargain if what you’re looking for is generous amounts of liquor. But after a terrible margarita and a so-so mojito we switched to $1 glasses of white wine that were actually quite tasty and a welcome respite from all the mediocre beer we drank throughout South East Asia.
9999 BBQ
The best part of this family-run establishment is that at lunch time the owners’ children, who were off from school (and still in their school uniforms), help mom and dad wait tables. They gave us the best service we had anywhere in Asia. And that includes the hoity-toity and totally overrated Sugar Palm where service was absolutely abysmal.
And one to Miss: Sugar Palm
Sugar Palm’s crispy spring rolls looked cool, tasted meh.
This place gets high marks from foodies, but it’s pretension and mediocre food left us totally cold. Their signature amok was just a run-of-the-mill fish in red curry sauce. The satays were below average with a tasteless peanut sauce. And while the crispy spring rolls get high marks for appearance (they’re little woven bundles), they get low marks on flavor.
Making maters worse, we had far better service from the 10-year-old girl who waited on us at budget 9999 than we got from the entire team at Sugar Palm. Our entrees weren’t served together, we couldn’t get a glass of water to save our lives, and everyone in the place treated us like they were doing us a favor.
It was by far the most expensive meal we had in Cambodia and easily our worst experience.
