Daun Penh Dining Scene: Central Market & Street 53
Beneath the great yellow dome of Psar Thmei and along the shophouse-lined streets of Daun Penh, one of Phnom Penh's oldest dining districts rewards those who look past the market stalls. Here is how to spend a full day eating and drinking around Central Market and beyond.
There is a particular quality to Daun Penh in the early morning, before the heat gathers. The great yellow dome of Psar Thmei (Central Market) rises above the neighbourhood rooftops, the Art Deco crown of a building that the French colonial administration constructed in 1937 on reclaimed swampland, and which has been the commercial engine of the district ever since. By seven in the morning the market is already in full operation: stalls selling dried fish and spices and bolts of fabric, jewellers behind glass cases, the low hum of commerce that has barely changed in rhythm for eighty years. Around it, on the numbered streets that press in from every direction, a very different kind of day is just beginning.
The eating and drinking around Central Market does not announce itself the way the riverside does. There are no promenades, no rooftop bars visible from the tuk-tuk. The dining here is folded into the fabric of the district: down shophouse corridors, through mall lobbies, behind modest facades on streets that the average visitor crosses without stopping. That is its advantage. The food tends to be better and cheaper than anything you will find in the more obvious neighbourhoods, and the crowd is the city itself rather than a curated cross-section of it.
Here is a full day in Daun Penh: from first coffee to final glass.
Morning: Start at the Source
The day begins well at The Shop (1B Preah Ang Non St / Street 102), which has been one of Phnom Penh's most dependable breakfast addresses for years. The menu is deceptively simple (good coffee, well-made sandwiches, salads, pastries), but The Shop earns its longevity through consistency and care in a city where both can be hard to find. The room is calm and cool, the crowd a mix of long-term residents and anyone who has learned that this is where to start a Daun Penh morning before the day heats up in earnest.
For something closer to the market and considerably more Parisian in character, PAPA PAIN at Sorya Center Point (66Eo Street 63, Phsar Thmey I) is the answer. The French bakery chain (founded in Phnom Penh and now spread across the city) occupies a corner of Sorya mall, the shopping centre that sits shoulder-to-shoulder with the Central Market building itself. The croissants come out properly laminated and the sandwiches are assembled with the kind of care you expect from a kitchen that takes its bread seriously. It opens early, which makes it useful, and the air conditioning makes it pleasant. Order a coffee and a pastry and watch the market stalls set up through the window.
A short walk south on Street 110, Co & Bloom Coffee (91 Street 110) operates as the neighbourhood's specialty option: the kind of café that takes its single-origin sourcing seriously without making you feel like you need to take notes. The space is well-designed and unhurried. It is a good place to sit with a laptop or a book through mid-morning before the day makes its demands.
For the most local version of a Daun Penh breakfast, the answer is 126 Restaurant (126 Street 13, corner Street 136, Phsar Kandal), a Khmer institution that has been operating from the same corner since 1992. The kitchen is built around noodle soups: deep, carefully made broths served with the kinds of garnishes and condiments that reward the attention of someone who knows what they are doing with them. There are other Khmer breakfast dishes on the menu, but the soups are what the regulars come for, and have been for over thirty years. It opens early and runs at full pace through the morning. By the time the lunch crowd arrives, it has already done its best work.
Lunch: The Streets Around the Market
By midday, the streets around Central Market are at full volume, and lunch around here requires choosing a register.
La Marmite (Street 108) has been cooking French food in this neighbourhood longer than most of its competitors have existed. The name (the cooking pot) tells you what to expect: honest bistro food, reliable stocks, a kitchen that is not trying to reinvent anything but is committed to doing the classics correctly. Street 108 runs quietly behind the noise of the main market, and La Marmite feels of a piece with it: the kind of place that does not need to advertise because its regulars have been coming for years. The lunch menu makes a strong case for the set option.
For something with more heat and colour, Indian Restaurant Annapoorna (9 Kramuon Sar St / Street 114) occupies the corner of one of the small streets that run through the Phsar Thmey II area. Daun Penh has a long history with the South Asian community, and Annapoorna is a neighbourhood fixture rather than a passing trend: the curries are properly spiced and the thali represents remarkable value for the amount of food that arrives at the table.
If lunch is more of a quick errand than a sit-down affair, BanhSong Deli (41Eo Street 130) is worth knowing. The name is a nod to banh song (the Khmer dish of caramelised pork and vermicelli noodles that is one of the great quiet staples of the local kitchen), and that grounding in Cambodian flavour runs through the menu even when the format skews toward the casual and the quick. Street 130 is a useful artery to find yourself on at lunchtime, and BanhSong sits comfortably within it.
Afternoon: Street 130 and the Long Slow Middle of the Day
The two or three hours after lunch in Phnom Penh reward the decision to slow down rather than push through. Gastro 130 (28-30 Street 130, Phsar Kandal 1) is useful for exactly this reason. The gastropub sits on a lively corner of Street 130 (a stretch that, once the afternoon shifts into evening, makes no particular effort to hide its character as part of Phnom Penh's red light district), and it operates twenty-four hours, which gives it an equanimity about what time of day you arrive and what you need when you do. The menu runs a broad international range, the kind of kitchen that can produce a decent burger at three in the afternoon or a proper meal at three in the morning without making a fuss about either. It has the easy, well-worn feel of a place that has seen enough different hours of the day to stop performing any particular one.
Evening: Phsar Kandal After Dark
By five o'clock the light in Daun Penh shifts and the neighbourhood recalibrates. The market traders begin packing down. The restaurants fill.
Ostro Restaurant & Bar (28 Street 136, corner Street 5, Phsar Kandal 1) is the evening's natural first stop in this part of the district: a proper bar-and-restaurant operation on a corner that earns its position as a Phsar Kandal anchor. The kitchen is solid, the drinks list is put together with some thought, and the room has enough energy in the evening to feel like a destination rather than a fallback. It stays open late enough to structure the rest of the night around.
When the evening calls for something more considered, Bouchon Wine Bar (82 Oknha Ket St / Street 174), bouchon being French for both a wine-bar and a cork, which is exactly the kind of wordplay a serious wine list earns, brings a different pace to Daun Penh's after-dark hours. The wine programme is the point, the space is intimate, and Street 174 in the Chey Chumneas area has a quieter, more residential quality than the streets closer to the market, which is, by this point in the day, precisely what the evening calls for.
Tips for the Day
Getting oriented: Central Market itself is the landmark to give any tuk-tuk driver. Everything in this guide is within a ten-to-fifteen-minute walk of the yellow dome in one direction or another.
Timing: The market is best before 9am: the light is good, the crowd is manageable, and the vendors are fresh. After noon the surrounding streets heat up fast. Plan the longer walk for early morning or late afternoon.
Street 130: This is the main spine of the southern part of this route and worth understanding as an artery: Gastro 130, BanhSong Deli and the Phsar Kandal block all sit on or just off it. Orient yourself here and the neighbourhood makes sense.
Cash: Smaller lunch spots and the market stalls around Psar Thmei generally prefer cash. The cafés and evening venues on this list take card and ABA Pay.
Daun Penh is not the neighbourhood that most visitors spend their time in, and that is largely the point. The eating around Central Market has none of the polish of the riverside and none of the self-consciousness of BKK1: it is just the city feeding itself, on streets that have been doing this for a very long time. A day spent moving through it, from a bowl of noodle soup at a corner that has been open since 1992 to a glass of wine on Street 174 as the district goes quiet, is one of the better ones Phnom Penh offers.
Want more? Browse every venue in Daun Penh, dig into the city's best Khmer food, or follow the river south with our Riverside dining guide. Planning a packed day? See our one-day Phnom Penh itinerary, or walk the neighbourhood's museums, galleries and colonial architecture with Art, Architecture & Hidden Gems Around the Royal Palace.