Best of Phnom Penh 2013

Best place to lose your mind with alcoholic madness

L’Absinthe Bar, #216 Street 51

The hallucinatory powers of absinthe have long been disproven by science, but what do a bunch of geeks in lab coats really know anyway? Van Gogh, Degas, Picasso, Hemingway and Edgar Allen Poe all swore by the Green Goddess. Who are we to contradict? L’Absinthe Bar carries approximately 20 kinds of Green Muse from all over the world. Absinthe alone is terribly bitter and it’s common to sweeten and dilute it, often in elaborate ritual. With its water fountains, flaming sugar cubes and intricately cut spoons, the act of making a glass is often just as pleasurable as drinking it. Ask for Thibault, the proprietor. He knows his absinthe and will serve you well.

Best Mexican breakfast

Chorizo hash at Alma Cafe, #43A Street 454

Alma Cafe’s recipe for success is singular: Mexican food made by Mexican people. The Chorizo hash – served with two eggs and salsa, juice and coffee for only $4 – is so good you’ll think you died and went to San Antonio. Big meaty chunks of homemade chorizo come pan fried with potato cubes and plated alongside two sunny side up eggs. The rest of the breakfast dishes – huevos rancheros, breakfast burritos and the chilaquiles – are all heavenly, too, but there’s just no beating a good chorizo.

Best place to watch a Cambodian kick a Thai’s arse

Apsara Boxing Stadium, #69 Street 57

Once a month the superstars of trainer Yuth Phutang’s stable take on their Thai counterparts at the Apsara studios in BKK1. The room itself is small and intimate with short stands and a low ceiling, and the crowds push up to ringside. Sen Rady, a fresh-faced 57kg pressure fighter, is the undefeated local prodigy. He is small but strong with knockout power and a cast-iron chin. And when he turns it on and the crowd starts roaring, you know you are witnessing a Cambodian fight legend in the making.

Best place to see a cage fight

CTN Boxing Arena, Route 5

The sport of MMA is virtually brand new to Cambodia, so anyone expecting UFC-quality fighting should take a quick reality check before heading to the CTN arena on a Sunday evening (fights start at 7pm). What local fighters lack in experience, however, they more than make up for in sheer toughness. Many, if not most, fighters have converted from Kun Khmer, so stand-up striking skills are far superior to any ground work. But therein lies the charm. Even with small gloves, there is a willingness to stand and trade that you seldom see at higher levels. And Sunday nights at the CTN cage are often as entertaining as anything you’re likely to see on TV. Plus, there’s far more energy pulsing through a live crowd. The violence in the ring is far more immediate. And entry is free.

Best tiny bar

Seibur, #34 Street 308

A year ago, brothers George and William Norbert-Munns opened Bar Sito – literally ‘small bar’ in Spanish – an intimate speakeasy in the Street 240½ alley. Not men to rest on their laurels, last month the two opened a new, even smaller, bar called Seibur on Street 308. Adorned in light hardwoods and soft lighting, Seibur feels like an aperitif room on a small yacht, close-quartered and intimate, well-made and sturdy. But because of its size — the room might hold 10 people if four sat outside – it’s easy to arrive with a few friends and take over the place. And after a cocktail or two, it’s really, really easy to start thinking of Seibur as not just any aperitif room, but your aperitif room — a feeling the staff do nothing to dismiss.

Best coffee roaster

Feel Good Cafe, #79 Street 136

The first thing you notice when you walk into Feel Good is the giant chrome-and-black coffee roaster, an elaborate, industrial-looking piece of equipment that appears far out of place given its surroundings. Every morning Marc Adamson rises at a brutal hour to hand pick his coffee beans. Most are from Cambodia, but there are some Laotian and Vietnamese beans in his mix, too. The result is a perfectionist’s blend that rivals the best coffees found anywhere in the region. Take a bag home or sip a cup on the spot. Or both.

Best skateboard shop

The Skateshop, #9 Street 7

The skateboard community in Phnom Penh is tiny and until only recently there wasn’t even a skate shop in town. That all changed in July when a shutterbug and skate enthusiast who goes by the handle Samjam opened the capital’s first real skate shop on Street 7. The Skateshop carries a selection of decks and board accessories – trucks, wheels, bearings — as well as skater-style shirts and shoes. The shop is the de facto epicentre of the local skate community, and the city’s next generation of shredders can often be found across the street in the park abusing the concrete.

Best place to road test a jet ski

Street 63 during rainy season

Most companies suggest 16 inches to two feet deep to be on the safe side. Anyone who has ever tried to cross Street 63 in BKK1 knows that the water can easily get that deep.  And how James Bond are you weaving and throwing spray on the bogged-out motos and Corollas? Remember to mind swimming children and floating plastic bags (don’t forget: a jet pump acts like a giant vacuum cleaner).

Best place to test your patience

The shampoo aisle, Lucky Supermarket

A regular shopping stop for many expats, Lucky Supermarket is micro on the scale of the supermarkets many Westerners are used to. Two shopping trolleys can cause a traffic jam in nearly any aisle and nowhere is this more apparent than the shampoo aisle, which is full dawn till dusk not only of shoppers, but of company representatives who lean against displays checking their make-up and taking selfies. Then again, you could always be stuck in the queue at ANZ.

Best place to pull a tourist

Top Banana, Street 278

Drop a ‘Moi tiet’ at the bar and you have their interest. Tell them that you have lived here for more than six months and their pulse quickens. Mention that you work with at-risk people for a very small wage and you’ve sealed the deal. Don a ‘Human rights defender’ T-shirt and you might just get stuck with them for life. Perish the thought.

Best place to show you how clever you aren’t

Howie’s Bar, Street 51

Upon entry you are greeted with smiling faces and ‘Hello, brother/sister!’ You sit down and order a drink. ‘Would you like to play a game?’ What game? ‘Connect Four.’ What’s the wager? ‘A drink.’ Why not? You used to beat your grandma all the time and your winning streak against your six-year-old nephew is just embarrassing. EPIC FAIL! You’re more likely to see a UFO land on the roof of the Heart of Darkness than win a game of Connect Four in Howie’s.

Best place to have an argument

Candy Bar, Street 136

You just blew a bunch of cash you didn’t have playing Connect Four in Howie’s Bar and you’re angry and thirsty. Smile Mart is always an option, but the canned enthusiasm of their employees doesn’t fit your mood. Why not hit Candy Bar? The post-op/pre-op/cross-dressing (?) barmaid/man down there is sure to greet you with a big frown and plenty of attitude. And God bless her/him/it: they’re always up for a blazing row.

Best advice for a newcomer

When a driver says: ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ what he really means is: ‘No idea!’
You’re a foreigner and your knowledge of the local language is limited, but you can never underestimate how little someone else knows. Knowing a landmark near the place you want to go and how to get to your destination from said landmark are key to easy transportation in the capital. Street numbers are helpful, but house or building numbers are worthless, for the most part. And forget about handing over a map: you’re the only one in the conversation who can read one (assuming you actually can).

Best cheap laugh

Comedy Club Cambodia, Pontoon

Why do we laugh? The answer, argues Sigmund Freud in his 1905 book The Joke And Its Relation To The Unconscious, is that jokes – much like dreams – satisfy our unconscious desires. “Jokes have not received nearly as much philosophical consideration as they deserve in view of the part they play in our mental life,” wrote the Austrian psychoanalyst four decades before a young Lenny Bruce earned $12 and a spaghetti dinner for his first stand-up gig in Brooklyn. Freud has a point. Stand-up comedy is arguably the oldest, most universal, basic and deeply significant form of humorous expression. From the fools and jesters of the Middle Ages, through 19th century humorists Mark Twain and Artemus Ward and finally onto the Eddie Izzards of today, comics are society’s shamans: visionaries who use the alchemy of laughter to present the world in a different light. Today, Phnom Penh plays regular host to some of the world’s most rib-tickling funny people, such as Ireland’s Aidan Killian, at the Comedy Club Cambodia, where the laughter flows just as fast as the beer.

Best riots that weren’t

The general election

Riot police erected ominous-looking razor wire across the capital. The Cambodian electorate responded by hanging flowers and laundry from it in abundance. In scenes reminiscent of San Francisco in the 1960s, brute force was met with a certain beatnik abandon. Bravo, Cambodians. Take that, so-called ruling party.

Best surprise discovery

The Cambodian tailorbird

Simon Mahood, who works for the Wildlife Conservation Society, had always wanted to discover a new species, dreaming of Livingstone-like explorers trekking deep through malaria-infested jungles. What he didn’t anticipate was doing so about a 30-minute drive from his own front doorstep. Intrigued by photos taken by researchers probing avian influenza in small birds in 2009, Simon realised they had captured a Cambodian tailorbird – which build nests by threading spider silk or other fibres through a leaf – without knowing it was a new species. Of the discovery, Simon told the Daily Telegraph: “I’ve always wanted to discover a bird species, but I never expected it would happen like this. I certainly didn’t expect to be standing in flip-flops and shorts a half an hour from home.”

Best live music venue

Equinox, Street 278

As befits a bar named after the twice-yearly occurrence when the Sun hits its zenith above the equator, night is given equal weight as day at Equinox. This two-storey labyrinthine bar boasts not only the capital’s widest live music repertoire, with everything from bachata to punk to raga dub, but also what is perhaps its most seasoned sound engineer. Ohio-born Anthony Mrugacz has racked up 35 years in the music industry, touring almost as many countries with, among others, Burning Spear, Alpha Blondie, and the Pixies. His is a deliberately tight ship: limited space creates a sense of intimacy between bands and fans, and killer acoustics keep gigs ringing in your ears for days. Chained to your desk/spouse/offspring? Listen in live online. Nice.
Runner up: Show Box

Best band name

Dengue Fever

At worst it’s an infectious tropical disease characterised by fever, headache, a creeping measles-like rash and muscle and joint pain; at best it’s the name of the Los Angeles-based sextet who take ’60s Cambodian psyche rock and stuff it through a blender. Dengue Fever, so called because Farfisa organ player Ethan Holtzman – a Californian hipster backpacking through Southeast Asia – was riding in a beaten pick-up truck with a friend who’d contracted the disease when he first heard the captivating melodies of ’60s Cambodian rock, have done it again: despite being based on the other side of the world, they’ve confounded the laws of geography and won Best Band Name in Phnom Penh.
Runner up: Cambodian Space Project

Best band

Dub Addiction

This Phnom Penh-based collective, presided over by hardcore ragamuffin, dub, jungle and drum ‘n’ bass aficionado Professor Kinski (the German music producer known to friends as Jan Mueller), produces an epic fusion of reggae and dub with Khmer saravan. “Cambodia is a country with an exciting musical past: old Khmer Rock, Sinsi Samouth, Rua Sorey Sothea, all killed by the Khmer Rouge,” he says. “When I arrived in Cambodia in 2002, there was nothing left except cheesy karaoke. Hearing those beautiful voices and melodies gave me the inspiration to use those old styles and create a new fusion groove out of it with Western funk, house, big beat and electro influences.” The result is the most epic live band in the country. Hear, hear.
Runner up: Cambodian Space Project

Best musician

Scott Bywater

Somehow the words on his business card simply don’t quite cut it: ‘Kind of a music guy, writes a bit’ doesn’t begin to describe the capital’s most loved muso. Having strutted his stuff on stage with everyone from the Cambodian Space Project to the Lazy Drunks, via the WASH collaboration and the Riverside Raybans, Tasmanian Scott Bywater – self-described ‘poet of the bar room’ – has now produced his third volume of published poetry and continues to roam “in pursuit of the unlimit”. “It appeals to me, to be always moving,” he says. “At this stage I’m down to a suitcase and a guitar or two. It’s the idea that the journey is more important than the destination. Arrival is always the same, but the journey is always different.” Congratulations on your arrival as finest musician, Mr B.
Runner up: Conrad Keely

Best open mic

Equinox, Street 278

Though open mics often focus on verbal skills such as poetry and comedy, the concept probably outdates the spoken language and once involved our hairy, large-foreheaded ancestors grunting melodiously for each other’s entertainment. As time went on, the tradition continued as a way for people to share their talents with peers in the absence of a fourth wall. Enough open mics have sprung up locally that they now outnumber days of the week, but Equinox – which now plays host to the monthly PP Punchliners comedy open mic – is The Daddy.
Runner up: Show Box

Best artist

Kosal Khiev

A self-described “poet and tattoo artist”, Kosal Khiev’s spoken-word performances are marked with an intensity and rawness that penetrate class and cultural boundaries like a Teflon-coated bullet. Kosal grew up without a father in California, in public housing projects engulfed with poverty, violence and drugs. He was deported to Cambodia in 2011 after doing a 16-year stretch for attempted murder. Since arriving, he has won a string of local and international accolades and represented Cambodia in the 2012 Poetry Parnassus, an international gathering of acclaimed poets. Kosal writes about abandonment, isolation and despair, yet without falling victim to his emotions. He remains hopeful even in existential moments of Hell. And it’s impossible to remain untouched by his honesty or uninspired by his resilience.
Runner up: Chhan Dina

Best arts space

Meta House, Sothearos Blvd.

Ahhhhh, zee Germans. Only they could create what is in effect a house about a house. Yet within the walls of that house about a house lurk some of the capital’s most creative souls. From beat poets to punk rockers, from painters to sonic sculptors, all can be found propped against the bar on any given day discussing elements of existentialism and the suchlike. And, let’s be honest, art exhibitions never tasted better than when being washed down with the finest German fare.
Runner up: Java Cafe & Gallery

Best movie theatre

The Flicks, Streets 95 & 136

Once upon a time, The Flicks was the only place to see Western cinema in Phnom Pehn on a screen bigger than your plasma. Amazingly, despite competition from two other ‘traditional’ cinemas (ooh, cup holders on the armrests!), The Flicks remains top of the readers’ choice board. Perhaps it’s the distinct Southeast Asian feel of their viewing space, or the fact they show more than just the newest big-budget CGI stuff that Hollywood is trying to shove down our throats.
Runner up: Legend

Best bookstore

Monument Books

In a town where stolen and photocopied paperbacks are openly sold by child grifters, Monument Books is a refreshing testament to decency. The capital’s oldest book store houses the world’s best collection of Cambodia-related titles as well as the country’s largest selection of magazines, best-sellers and new works. The range of children’s books and pre-teen lit isn’t shabby, either. A Blue Pumpkin on the middle floor serves a full menu and the toy shop upstairs offers ogle-worthy options for those too young to read.
Runner up: D’s Books

Best DJ

Simon C Vent

Simon C Vent (UK) – a staple of the Drop Dead Disco nights pumping out nu disco, deep house and tech house everywhere from here to Otres Beach – is a regular turner of tables at Down With The Kids DJ hangouts such as The Eighty8 and Backstage. And, according to you lot, when it comes to spinning he’s Numero Uno.
Runner up: Funk Elastiks

Best hotel

Raffles Le Royal

One of Southeast Asia’s destination hotels, Raffles Phnom Penh has been an iconic resting place for the well travelled since 1929. Entrepreneurs, writers, journalists, royalty and intrepid travellers of all stripes have stalked its corridors, with guests of note including former US First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy (whose lipstick-smeared champagne flute now rests in a glass case at the entrance of the Elephant Bar) and French writer, statesman and adventurer André Malraux.
Runner up: Plantation

Best gym

The Place, Street 51

Forgetting for a second year the fact that its pool is billed as ‘mini Olympic-sized’ (owners, take note: a pool is either of Olympic proportions or it isn’t), The Place is so geared towards highfalutin fitness that you almost feel guilty for sweating. Housed in a purpose-built complex on Street 51, the gym – which occupies more than 3,000 square metres spread over four floors – is Phnom Penh’s ultimate homage to the ‘my body is a temple’ ethos. Aspiring hard bodies can choose from more than 250 cardio machines; free weights; a hot yoga studio complete with Indian yoga master; karate studio complete with Cambodia Karate Federation master; personal trainers; aerobics classes and, of course, the – ahem – ‘mini Olympic-sized’ pool.
Runner up: Fitness One @ Himawari

Best spa

Bodia, Sothearos Blvd

Sometimes even the hardiest of us need a little pampering and there are few places better designed to soothe the tired in body and mind than Bodia Spa. Providing the full gamut of relaxation therapies at surprisingly reasonable prices, Bodia is something of an oasis on the city’s rough and ready Riverside: dip your toe in the jacuzzi while staff shower you with petals (really); prepare to be slathered in aromatherapy oils; book yourself in for a miraculous slimming massage – the most pleasant diet you’ll ever try. Bodia is designed to look like a ‘sheltering cocoon’, which means that although you may enter as a caterpillar, you emerge somewhat improved.
Runner up: U&Me

Best place to take your kids

Kids City, SIhanouk Blvd.

Laser tag, an ice skating rink, a hands-on interactive science zone and clip-and-climb walls of various difficulty. Not convinced? How about a playground with staff on hand to supervise your child while you nip off to the in-house Gloria Jeans or Blue Pumpkin for a little You time? It’s almost enough to make you want a kid, or consider borrowing someone else’s for a day.
Runner up: Le Jardin

Best free wi-fi hotspot

Brown Coffee & Bakery

The interiors at Brown are just a little less contrived, the furniture a little more comfortable, than most other coffee shops in town, which makes Brown the perfect place to order a hot cup of caffeine and fritter your idle hours away surfing Facebook and catching up on the latest daytime fashions of the Phnom Penhoisie. The smoothies are rich and creamy, the chocolate brownies moist and rich and the cookies not too sweet. What’s more, Brown is Cambodian owned – no soul-crushing overseas multinationals here – which makes handing over your greenbacks just a little more easy.
Runner up: The Blue Pumpkin

Best place to people watch

Riverside

Sisowath Quay is a kilometre-long cacophony of humanity in all its ambling glory. Young drink-sellers peddle bottled water and crispy snacks in an assortment of seafood flavours. Older women carry bathroom scales and for a few hundred riel the curious can count their kilos. Blind musicians plunk away on stringed instruments. Beggars beg. Runners run. Tourists tour. Outdoor photo exhibits go up and down and twice a year like clockwork the river changes course. All mad and sublime and amazing. Jump right in and be a part of it or grab a chair and a beer and watch it all meander by.
Runner up: The FCC

Best place to watch the sun set

Eclipse Sky Bar, PP Tower

High: it’s a wonderful place to be. Just ask any stoner. For everyone else, there’s the city’s burgeoning sky bars – perfectly elevated perches in which to get pissed (altitude can actually increase the effects of alcohol; just sayin’). For an unparalleled combination of booze and views, the Eclipse Sky Bar, which sits atop the 23-storey Phnom Penh Tower, offers a 360-degree panorama of the city from sufficient loftiness to make your knees go weak. And that’s before you get the bill.
Runner up: The Bungalows

Best place to get drunk during the daytime

Public House, Street 240&1/2

Getting drunk in the daytime carries a certain air of delinquency that is absent when tipping in the evening. Drinking at night is customary; everyone does that. Only a true reprobate shoots The Man a middle finger and gets sloshed while the rest of the world works. Luckily, Public House appeals to the morally superior glutton in all of us. The restaurant offers an all-you-can-eat-and-drink brunch, but only on weekends. It’s free-flow Bellinis (sparkling wine with peach puree) and Bloody Marys with unlimited servings from the short but exceptional food menu. A fruit salad with yoghurt tops the list and cleanses the palate. Then there’s loads of hearty stuff and bacon: corn fritters & bacon, bacon & avocado on toast, bacon & egg pie, eggs Benedict (served with bacon, of course). Eat and drink as much as you want and do it with a clean conscious. It’s the weekend. You don’t have to go to work. You don’t have to lie to your boss. And the sparkling wine keeps it classy.
Runner up: Show Box

Best restaurant

Public House, Street 240&1/2

William Norbert-Munns doesn’t like the term ‘gastro pub’. He doesn’t like it at all. Suggest that his and his brother’s second Street 240½ venture is akin to what might be described precisely as such in, say, London, and the New Zealander hisses through clenched teeth: “Bistro! I was going for bistro!” He has a point, not least because the word ‘gastro’ can have less-than-pleasant connotations in the developing world. Public House is less pub – of any hue – and more Antipodean Escape. The intertwining aromas of carved wood and fine food, the latter courtesy of an open kitchen policy, are almost as intoxicating as the cocktails (the $5 Mekong Breeze – vodka, cranberry juice and grapefruit juice – is a must if you don’t want to waste any time on the road to oblivion). The boys even made a special box to hold copies of The Advisor (No, we did not doctor the vote – Ed). Awwwww, shucks!
Runner up: Deco

Best place for lunch

Artillery, Street 240&1/2

Artillery – the crunchy, ultra-healthy eatery in the Street 240½ alley – stands proudly at the opposite extreme of Phnom Penh’s notoriously late-night boozy reputation. The menu is nearly all vegetarian, with leafy salads and vegan delights such as raw pizza and pasta. Heartier dishes include an excellent falafel served with hummus and the Supreme, the lone meaty sandwich made with farmhouse pork sausage and served on walnut bread. For a healthy energy boost try the Chocolate superfood smoothie with raw cacao and goji berries. Or when the one-too-many nights start catching up, detox with a raw food cleanse. Your liver will thank you.
Runner up: The Shop

Best place for a coffee

Brown Coffee & Bakery

There’s a reason we’re continually stuck in traffic near the corner of Streets 51 and 294: the line of Range Rovers outside Brown’s. With six Brown Coffee & Bakery locations around the capital, perhaps you’ve had this experience as well. Serving a variety of pastries, cakes and snacks in addition to hot and cold drinks, Brown’s was voted the best place in Phnom Penh for a cup of coffee (assuming that you’re OK with calling medium ‘large’ and large ‘grande’). At Brown the ‘goal is to make every cup count’. KER-CHING!!
Runner up: Java Cafe

Best burger joint

Mike’s Burger House

Make no mistake: Mike is not famous for serving gourmet burgers with foo-foo vegetables and smelly French cheeses. Mike makes just-a-little-bit greasy, just-a-little-bit messy drive-thru-style burgers wrapped in wax paper and served on a plastic tray the way God intended. Mike’s patties are crisp on the outside and soft and juicy on the inside. The iceberg lettuce is fresh and crunchy and the buns soft and mildly sweet. There are exotic burgers on Mike’s menu, spinoffs such as the Hawaiian (with pineapple) and the chilliburger. But’s it’s the classic cheeseburger and bacon cheeseburger that everyone from Cambodian royalty to American ambassadors flock to, and the likes of which, along with things like the A&W Root Beer float, are likely to send homesick Americans into rapture.
Runner up: Public House

Best local beer

Cambodia

Frank Zappa once said: “You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline – it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.” According to the Khmer Brewery web page, “It all began with a dream: a dream to create the best beer in Cambodia.” With all votes counted it would seem that their dream has been realised.
Runner up: Anchor

Best place for a sugar fix

Blue Pumpkin

What began as a small Siem Reap bakery run by French pastry chef Arnaud Curtat and his wife is today a string of 16 cafes where even the sourest of pusses can be turned sweet. The New York cheesecake is out of this world; northern Italian-style gelato ice creams come in every flavour, including local staples passion fruit and durian (no, really). Fresh produce is local and seasonal; the mission statement: to satisfy your taste buds and shower you with the best customer service. Mission accomplished.
Runner up: Bloom Cakes

Best bar

Bar Sito, Street 240&1/2

Chicago mob boss Al Capone would have appreciated a place like this. Dark wood panelling; exposed brickwork and a subterranean ambience evoke the spirit of Prohibition: a time when square-jawed gangsters roamed the streets armed with Thompson submachine guns while anti-prohibitionists, known as ‘wets’, swarmed speakeasies in defiance of the nationwide ban on booze. These high-class hang-outs were more often than not owned by the likes of the man called Scarface and reeked of the indulgence that went hand-in-hand with criminal enterprise. Such is Bar Sito, Spanish for ‘small bar’ – owned by the impossibly trendsetting Norbert-Munns brothers. Bada bing.
Runner up: Show Box

Best happy hour

Elephant Bar @ Raffles

When you walk into Raffles Le Royal looking for Jackie Kennedy’s legendary pre-war hangout, you’ll know you’re in the right place when the piano player gives you a warm smile and a nod. Here, in one of the most historically significant hotel bars in town, happy hour doesn’t last a mere 60 minutes, but a whole five hours. That’s right: FIVE. With everything from its signature Femme Fatale cocktail to the finest cognac slashed to half price, it’s the perfect place to taste the champagne high life on a pie ‘n’ chips budget. Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is class.
Runners up: Show Box and The Exchange

Best cocktail

Malongotini @ Bar Sito

As Jackie Chan once said: “Coffee is a language in itself.” Take that language, compress it into an espresso and add a dash of Kahlua and Absolut vodka. Now serve in a martini glass and garnish with three coffee beans. Not so much language as profanity, for this Malongotini packs one of the most powerful caffeine kicks in town. WAKE UP! In the best possible way.
Runner up: Espresso Martini @ Metro

Best bar owner

George & Will Norbert-Munns @ Bar Sito, Public House & Seibur

If there was a monopolies and mergers commission in Cambodia this award might spark a Strongly Worded Conversation, but thankfully there isn’t. And so it gives us great pleasure to announce that the best bar owners in the capital – as voted for by you (OK, and us) – are those inimitable New Zealand brothers Will and George Norbert-Munns, they of Bar Sito, Public House and now Seibur fame. We love you, boys!
Runner up: Darin & Myles @ Show Box