At Sophath’s the approach is simple: do what you do well and keep it simple. On offer is rice soup with chicken or fish (6000 riel). The main dish, however, is num banh chok – traditional Khmer noodles – with chicken or fish curry (6,000 riel or 9,000 with bread and extra meat) and prohok, traditional Khmer fish (5,000 riel).
Along with the last two dishes comes a tray of herbs to rip up and add to the food. “I don’t know what they are called in English,” Vanny tells me. Neither do I because gardening and I don’t get along. The unnamed greenery brings out the flavour of the curry and topped up with the green chillies escalates it to the near-inferno temperature I like. Among the herbs sits a bowl of pickles and slices of lime; condiments of spicy sauces grace the middle of the table. Available beverages include a few soft drinks, Angkor beer and fresh sugar cane juice. Got it? Good because that is the entire verbal menu – and there isn’t a printed one. Three choices of dish make it easy for even the most indecisive of diners.
To find this local eatery, go to the Cambodian-Vietnamese Friendship Monument and look West. Then head towards the pink plastic chairs and the silver-coloured tables. Sophath’s is about half a block from my apartment and I’ve become a regular. My hardest lunchtime decision is whether to have the fish or the chicken. While the rice soup is okay, I prefer the curry or the prohok with the herbs.
With the park and Sothearos as a backdrop – remember the capital is not known for its green spaces – it is reassuring to see some grass. Besides the predictable – but as spicy as you want to make it – food, Street 7 is a quiet place to watch the local people go about their daily business. And a chair at Sophath’s provides voyeur legitimacy.
The tuk-tuk drivers on the corner gossip and play cards as they wait for the next fare. Across the street are a couple of drink carts where the woman saves the cardboard for the ajay, who ply the streets with their pull-carts.
Right next to the portable toilets in the park is a family who live under a rather up-market blue tarp. The people look after the toilets and do some of the gardening for the park. Grandma and the child stick close to home. A man sleeps in the hammock, protected from the midday sun by a leafy tree. The digs are getting better all the time and a little shrine has been set up.
Who eats at Sophath’s? Students from the nearby university, office workers and people who live in the neighbourhood. Only the occasional tourist wanders in after visiting the Royal Palace. It doesn’t get much more local than eating at Sophath’s and watching Phnom Penh go by.
Sophath’s, corner of Street 7 & 264.