Best Desserts in Phnom Penh: From Palm Sugar to Patisserie
From the palm-sugar sweet soups ladled out at market stalls on Street 13 to a Kyoto-matcha patisserie in Toul Tom Poung, Phnom Penh's dessert scene runs deeper than most people ever discover. Here is where the city goes when it wants something sweet.
Phnom Penh takes its sweets seriously, and it always has. Long before the first gelato counter or Korean shaved-ice franchise arrived, the city ran on bang aem, the great Cambodian family of sweet soups, sticky rice puddings and coconut-milk desserts sold from market stalls and shophouse counters, eaten in the late afternoon when the heat begins to loosen its grip. That tradition never went anywhere. What has changed is everything that grew up around it: French patisserie of genuine ambition, Japanese pastry chefs sourcing matcha from Kyoto, Taiwanese sweet-soup kitchens, bean-to-bar chocolate made from Cambodian cacao, and gelato good enough to survive comparison with Italy.
The result is a dessert landscape that rewards deliberate eating rather than default choices. The best of it is scattered (a market stall in Daun Penh here, a patisserie in Toul Tom Poung there, a chocolate maker on a quiet BKK1 street) and almost none of it announces itself. Here is where to find it, starting with the tradition that came first.
The Khmer Sweet Tradition
Any honest account of dessert in Phnom Penh begins with the local canon, and one of the most dependable places to work through it is ពេញចិត្តលក់បង្អែម Bean Dessert Shop (200 Street 138, Tuek L'ak). The name tells you the specialisation: bean desserts, in every register the Cambodian kitchen produces them, red bean in coconut milk, green bean with sticky rice, taro and bean pudding, palm-sugar sticky rice balls. These are the flavours of a Cambodian childhood, made properly, at prices that make ordering two entirely reasonable. It opens at seven in the morning and closes by six, because this is daytime food and always has been.
Closer to the river, Street 19 runs two of the city's best shaved-ice addresses within a few doors of each other, and the choice between them comes down to what you want the ice dressed in. Le 1997 Dessert (104E Preah Ang Yukanthor St / Street 19) has built its name on natural palm sugar (the signature shaved ice, teuk kork chhus skor tnaot thommacheat, arrives dressed in it, a sweetness with more depth and less shout than anything from a syrup bottle, and the palm sugar pudding and traditional sweet soups extend the same principle across the rest of the counter. Degelo (Preah Ang Yukanthor St / Street 19), a short walk along the same street, answers with coconut instead) young coconut shaved ice, teuk kork chhus doung khchey, a mound of ice shaved fine, layered with young coconut flesh and finished with condensed milk. On a thirty-eight-degree afternoon there are few better decisions available in Phnom Penh than picking one, then coming back for the other.
South in Boeng Trabaek, Teuk Skor 410 keeps another branch of the tradition alive: durian sticky rice, jackfruit sticky rice, and coconut bread of the kind that disappears from the counter by early evening.
Gelato Done Properly
The city's Italian ice-cream scene is anchored by two addresses, and both earn their reputations daily.
Gelato Factory (44 Street 123) produces its gelato in-house from natural ingredients, and the difference is obvious from the first spoonful, the pistachio and tiramisu are the benchmarks, the salt-caramel and rum raisin the flavours regulars defend with unusual conviction. The room is compact and unhurried, the double-thick milkshakes are a meal in themselves, and it stays open until eleven, which makes it one of the city's most useful after-dinner destinations. A second counter operates inside the Elia Greek Kitchen space on Bassac Lane, convenient for anyone finishing an evening on Street 308.
Across town in Toul Tom Poung, Pinocchio GELATO (534 Street 155) makes its gelato fresh on the premises every day, rotating more than ten flavours and doing something the Italian originals never attempted: durian gelato, black sesame, passion fruit sorbet, Southeast Asian flavours treated with Italian technique. The result is a shop that belongs distinctly to Phnom Penh rather than to Rome, which is exactly the point.
For something that refuses to sit in either camp, Koki Kitchen (37E1 Preah Ang Phanavong St / Street 240) occupies the ground floor of a French colonial building near the Royal Palace and pairs artisan gelato with Asian comfort food on the same short menu. Kampot vanilla and toasted coconut gelato sit alongside kimchi cream cheese wontons and cold sesame noodles, an unlikely combination that works precisely because neither side of the menu is treated as an afterthought. The mezzanine seating gives it a quieter, more considered feel than most dessert stops on this list.
The Asian Dessert Wave
Phnom Penh's appetite for East Asian dessert culture has produced some of the city's most distinctive sweet addresses.
Sulbing Dessert Cafe BKK (29 Street 334) brought the Korean bingsu craze to BKK1 and shows no sign of relinquishing it. The shaved-ice desserts come in more than sixteen varieties (the strawberry cheesecake and injeolmi versions, the latter built on rice cake and roasted soybean powder, draw the most repeat visits) and the croffle sits on the menu for anyone who wants their dessert warm. It runs until ten at night, which suits the after-dinner rhythm of the neighbourhood.
In the Russian Market area, An Tian - Taiwan Healthy Dessert (Street 155) works the Taiwanese sweet-soup tradition with a lightness that makes it dangerously easy to visit weekly. The palmyra palm fruit sweet soup and the pandan tofu are the standouts, desserts that finish clean rather than heavy, which in this climate counts for a great deal.
The purest single-product operation in the category is Le Castella Bakery (01M Street 516, Toul Kork), which bakes Taiwanese-style castella sponge cakes and very little else. The cakes emerge jiggling, sold whole or by the slice, in six core flavours from original to pandan to a cheese version with the cheese baked through the middle. They are best eaten warm, ideally within minutes of purchase, and the takeaway crowd that forms through the day suggests the neighbourhood has understood this perfectly.
The Patisserie Tier
At the refined end of the scale, three kitchens set the standard.
Chezshige x Strawberry Farm (Street 460, Toul Tom Poung) is the work of Chef Shigeru, a Japanese patissier who pairs classical technique with locally grown produce, the strawberry Basque cheesecake has become a neighbourhood icon, the choux à la crème are light enough to justify a second, and the matcha in the soft rolls comes from Kyoto. The bright, modern-industrial room fills steadily through the afternoon, and deservedly.
Tatie's (182 Preah Ang Eng St / Street 13) was founded in 2021 by three French women and makes its breads, viennoiseries and pastries entirely by hand. The fruit tarts and the pain au chocolat are the measure of the place, and the location near the National Museum makes it a natural stop on any Daun Penh morning, though the weekend brunch, with its savoury crêpes and seasonal pastries, is the fuller expression of what the kitchen can do. A second branch operates on Street 110 near Vattanac Tower.
Quieter and easier to miss, Le Biscuit Pastry (22D Street 450) is run by a French-trained pastry chef working at a scale small enough to keep everything exact. The craquelin choux with vanilla cream is the signature, the chocolate éclair the classic done correctly, and the whole operation has the feel of a chef who would rather make forty perfect things than four hundred adequate ones.
Chocolate, Made in Cambodia
WAT CHOCOLATE Store & Cafe (64 Street 360, BKK1) occupies a category of its own: a bean-to-bar chocolate maker sourcing cacao from Cambodian growers in Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri, producing its bars and desserts on-site. The Kampot pepper chocolate bar is the purchase that explains the whole project (Cambodian cacao meeting Cambodia's most famous export in one square) while the single-origin hot chocolate and the lava cake with chocolate ice cream reward anyone who sits down rather than shopping and leaving. Closed Mondays, and worth planning around.
Cakes Worth the Occasion
When the dessert needs to arrive at a table of more than two, the city has answers. Glow Cakes (22 Street 339, Toul Kork) (formerly known as Bloom) is a social enterprise whose local artisans produce bespoke celebration cakes and some of the most intricate sugar work in the country, alongside a daily counter of salted caramel and Oreo cupcakes for anyone whose occasion is simply Tuesday.
And for the everyday version, Moma Bakehouse & Bistro (Street 370) has built one of the largest followings of any bakery in the city on the strength of its chiffon-style bakes and Uji matcha egg tarts, a daytime bakery that shifts into a bistro and bar by evening, which means the egg tart at four o'clock and the glass of wine at eight can happen at the same address.
Tips for the Sweet Tooth
Timing matters for the traditional stalls: The Khmer dessert shops (Bean Dessert Shop, Le 1997 Dessert, Teuk Skor 410) are daytime operations that sell through their stock. Go in the afternoon; by early evening the best of it is gone.
Eat the castella warm: Le Castella's sponge cakes are a different product fresh from the oven than they are two hours later. If you are buying whole, time the visit rather than the errand.
Late-night options are real: Gelato Factory runs until 11pm and Sulbing until 10pm, which makes both dependable final stops after dinner in BKK1 or Toul Tom Poung.
Check the closing days: WAT CHOCOLATE closes Mondays and Le Biscuit Pastry keeps shorter hours than the chains. The independents on this list reward a quick check before crossing town.
Cash for the market stalls: The traditional dessert vendors operate in cash. The patisseries, gelato counters and chains take card and ABA Pay.
Dessert in Phnom Penh is not one scene but several, running in parallel, the palm-sugar tradition that predates everything, the patisserie tier that would hold its own in any capital, and the East Asian wave that keeps adding new vocabulary to the city's sweet tooth. The pleasure is in moving between them: palm-sugar shaved ice one afternoon, a Basque cheesecake the next, a warm castella whenever the timing lines up. Few cities this size offer that range, and fewer still offer it this cheaply. Eat accordingly.
Browse every dessert shop and bakery in Phnom Penh on BongNham, or find the coffee to go with it in our guide to the best cafés in BKK1. Eating your way around Toul Tom Poung or Daun Penh? Both guides cover the meal that should come first. Short on time? Follow our one-day Phnom Penh itinerary, or walk past Tatie's and Le Biscuit on the way round Art, Architecture & Hidden Gems Around the Royal Palace.