Pizza in Phnom Penh: Wood-Fired Specialists, Chains and the Late-Night Slice
From thirty-six-hour fermented dough on Bassac Lane to a metal-and-brick street cart throwing out Neapolitan pies on Rue Pasteur until five in the morning, Phnom Penh's pizza runs deeper than the city's size suggests. Here is where to find the best of it, register by register.
Pizza has quietly become one of the things Phnom Penh does properly. It should not be a surprise, given who lives here: a rotating international population, a large and long-settled Italian and expatriate community, and a city that has slowly demanded the real thing rather than a passable imitation of it. What that demand has produced is a scene with genuine range. At one end sit the wood-fired specialists, kitchens that treat the dough as a project and fly in Italian flour and San Marzano tomatoes to finish the job. At the other end sits a metal-and-brick street cart on the city's busiest bar street, turning out slices to people who have made questionable decisions about the hour. Both ends are worth knowing.
The range is really the story. A city this size has no business supporting Neapolitan pizzerias with imported ingredients, a Japanese-run wood-fired kitchen, a Filipino chain doing oversized New York pies, and a street operation that stays open until dawn, but Phnom Penh manages all of it at once. The trick is knowing which register you are in the mood for, because the difference between a serious wood-fired margherita and a late-night pepperoni is not a question of better or worse. It is a question of what the evening calls for.
Here is where the city's pizza is worth seeking out, register by register. Restaurant details were checked in September 2026.
The Wood-Fired Specialists
The dedicated pizzerias are where Phnom Penh's pizza is at its most serious, and the clearest example is Big Mama (Street 308, Bassac Lane). The dough is put through a thirty-six-hour cold fermentation before it ever sees the oven, and the San Marzano tomatoes, pepperoni and mozzarella are imported from Italy rather than approximated locally. The result is a Neapolitan pizza with the kind of light, blistered, properly leavened base that most kitchens in the city cannot match, alongside a baked pasta al forno and a homemade tagliatelle Bolognese for anyone who wanders past the pizza list. Big Mama keeps evening hours, opening at four and running late, so it belongs to dinner rather than lunch.
A short move north, AirBites Gourmet Pizza (Street 278, BKK1) works the same Neo-Neapolitan territory with its own signature. The kitchen builds its doughs on Italian flour and is known for a light, airy crust, but the menu is where it distinguishes itself: alongside a straight margherita from $8 sit a burrata pizza and a squid ink pizza finished with Hokkaido scallops, the sort of thing that signals a kitchen confident enough to play. It is closed on Mondays, which is worth remembering before you make the trip.
For sheer availability, Burrata Republic (corner of Preah Sihanouk Boulevard and Ke Nou Street, Phsar Kabko) is the specialist that keeps the longest hours in the category, open from late morning until one in the morning. As the name promises, the cheese does a lot of the work here, and the pizza list runs through the reliable canon of margherita, pepperoni, parma and four cheese, closed out with a classic tiramisu. The long hours make it the specialist you can actually get to when the others have called it a night.
The most atmospheric of the group is Cin Cin Pizzeria (corner of Streets 13 and 100), which occupies a French colonial building in the older centre of the city and runs a list of around fifteen wood-fired pizzas. The Vito's Deli, layered with parma ham, burrata, rocket and cherry tomatoes, is the one regulars point newcomers toward, and the antipasti and a proper tiramisu round the meal out. Pizzas run from roughly $9 to $17, and the room does as much for the evening as the food.
The newest of the specialists is Mozzas Pizza Napoletana (21 Street 454, Toul Tom Poung), a small owner-run pizzeria working a wood-fired oven and observing the Neapolitan orthodoxy properly: San Marzano tomato, fior di latte mozzarella and a base blistered the way that oven demands, running from a margherita at $6.50 through a diavola with spicy salami and provolone up to a prosciutto di Parma at $13.50 and a bresaola at $15. What sets it apart from the rest of this section is the panuozzo, the Neapolitan pizza-bread sandwich almost nobody else in the city bakes, split and filled with mortadella or prosciutto di Parma and finished with rocket and a drizzle of hot honey. It opens at midday and runs until midnight seven days a week, which makes it one of the few serious ovens in this register you can reach at lunch.
Where the Italian Kitchens Fit In
Several of the city's best pizzas come out of kitchens that sit alongside the dedicated specialists without quite fitting the same mould, and the obvious name is Pizza 4P's (Street 360, BKK1, with a second riverside branch at 313 Quayside). The Japanese-founded group makes its own mozzarella and burrata in-house, and its pizzas lean into an East-meets-West sensibility that you will not find at the more traditional rooms: a four-cheese pizza finished with honey, a burrata and parma ham margherita, and toppings that borrow from pho and shiso where you least expect them. It is the most celebrated pizza address in the city, and it earns the reputation.
Worth pulling out of the wider Italian pack for pizza specifically is Pizzeria Matteo (Street 466, Tonle Bassac, with a Tuol Kouk branch), a Japanese-owned kitchen that has been baking thin Neapolitan dough in a wood-fired stone oven since 2016. The quattro formaggi and the prosciutto crudo pizza are the standouts, and the weekday lunch set is one of the better value Italian lunches in the neighbourhood. Il Forno (Street 302, BKK1), named for the wood-fired oven at the centre of the room, has been turning out its four seasons and Italian sausage pizzas since 2015. For the full picture on the city's Italian dining rooms, our guide to the best Italian restaurants in Phnom Penh covers the pasta side of the story in more depth.
The New York Corner
Not everything in the city is aiming at Naples. Brooklyn Pizza + Bistro (Street 123) is the New York answer, a long-running favourite with the expatriate community that sells its pies in three sizes up to a forty-centimetre sharer and will also cut you a single slice. The pizza sits inside a full American bistro menu, with calzones and stuffed pizza alongside burgers, hot dogs, BBQ ribs and pasta with a choice of sauces, and it finishes with a homemade New York cheesecake that regulars treat as the actual reason to go. It also opens at ten in the morning and runs until ten at night, seven days a week, which makes it one of the few genuinely all-day pizza addresses in the city. One thing worth knowing before you order in: the delivery-only kitchen trading as Brooklyn Pizza Delivery is a separately owned business rather than an arm of this bistro, so that name on a delivery app will not bring you the pizza described here.
The Chains
The international chains are not where the interesting pizza lives, but they earn their place for consistency, delivery and the times when a familiar name is exactly what a table of children or a tired evening requires. Pizza Hut (Street 57, BKK1, with branches across the city) delivers the full stuffed-crust format most people already know, while Domino's runs a riverside branch on Sisowath Quay that stays open twenty-four hours, which is its own kind of useful. Papa John's holds down a Street 51 address open until two in the morning, and Yellow Cab Pizza Co., the Filipino chain, brings oversized New York-style pies and its Charlie Chan chicken pasta to the riverfront. None of them will change your mind about pizza, but all of them will deliver to your door at an hour when the specialists are shut.
Street Pizza and the Late-Night Slice
The most Phnom Penh corner of the whole scene is the cheap, local oven, and it takes several forms. Streetza Wood Fired Pizza (90 Rue Pasteur) is the most committed: Neapolitan-style pizzas fired on a metal-and-brick street cart at street-level prices, on a short rotating menu that runs to a margherita, a prosciutto and rocket, a calzone and garlic bread from the same cart. It opens at half past seven in the evening and runs until five in the morning, which tells you precisely who it is for.
At the other end of the informal spectrum, Pepperoni Pizza (Street 19) is a family-run wood-fired operation so small it seats around six people, open evenings only, where the owner designed and built the wood-burning oven himself and each pizza comes out of it made to order with freshly prepared dough. There is nothing elaborate about it. That is the point.
Worth seeking out for a different reason is Pizza Law (Street 240), a locally founded pizzeria run by Thoeun Bunheng, a former assistant chef who bakes homemade dough in a brick dome wood-fired oven. The result has a flavour profile that sits apart from everything else in the city, and the signature Law Pizza, loaded with pepperoni, is the one to start with. It runs evenings until ten.
The rest of the late-night register clusters around the bar streets. Martini Pizza (Street 51) is one of the better value options on the strip, open until three in the morning with a wide list of pies alongside kebabs and paninis for the after-drinks crowd. Martin Pizza (Street 172) keeps even later hours, closing at five, and Mr Jack Pizza Valley (Street 118) runs its cheesy-crust and fusion pizzas until four, with a Malai Boti pizza that nods to the neighbourhood's South Asian palate. For something earlier, Pink Elephant Pizza (Sisowath Quay) offers more than thirty varieties from a riverside terrace at prices that leave room for a second round.
Tips for Eating Pizza in Phnom Penh
Know which register you are in. The wood-fired specialists and the Italian kitchens are a sit-down evening; the chains are for delivery and children; the street ovens are for after dark. Choosing well starts with being honest about which of those you actually want.
Mind the opening quirks. Big Mama opens only at four, so it is dinner only. AirBites closes on Mondays. The late-night ovens on Streets 51, 172 and 118 do not get going until the evening, so do not plan a lunch around them.
Book ahead at the weekend. The specialists fill quickly on Friday and Saturday nights, and Pizza 4P's in particular is worth reserving. The chains and street ovens never require it.
Delivery is easy. Most of the chains and a good number of the specialists run through foodpanda and GrabFood, so a serious pizza can reach you at home without much trouble.
Carry a little cash. The specialists and chains take card and ABA Pay, but the smaller street operations often prefer cash, particularly late at night.
Phnom Penh has no particular obligation to take pizza seriously. It does anyway. A city this size, this far from Naples or New York, has assembled Japanese kitchens baking Neapolitan dough, a Vietnamese-founded operation making its own burrata, a Cambodian chef firing homemade dough in a brick dome wood-fired oven, and a street cart on Rue Pasteur that is still going at four in the morning long after everyone else has given up. None of it was inevitable. All of it is worth eating.
Cover photo: Pizza, Phnom Penh