Siem Reap eats at dawn: cold num banh chok noodles under green fish gravy, pork-and-rice breakfasts, prahok pounded into everything. Three days here trace Khmer cooking from Psar Leu's vats to fine-dining rooms run by Cambodian chefs.
The 1920s covered market opens at 06:30 and the wet-food aisles on the north side sell num banh chok — cold rice noodles under green fish kroeung gravy with banana blossom — until the pots run dry around 09:30.
Kethana Dunnett's teak-floored wooden house serves the fish amok she once taught Gordon Ramsay — freshwater fish steamed in banana leaf with kroeung, coconut cream and slaked palm sugar. Open 11:00-22:00, closed Sundays.
Australian-run espresso bar anchoring Hup Guan Street, the walkable Kandal Village strip of cafés and boutiques. Beans are roasted in Cambodia, the cold brew is cut with palm sugar, and the cookies carry Kampot pepper. Open 07:00-17:00.
Sombai infuses Cambodian rice spirit with anise-coconut, ginger-red chilli, banana-cinnamon and green tea-lemongrass, poured free from ten hand-painted bottles at its Wat Damnak workshop where local artists decorate each one on site.
A half-day class opening with a guided market walk to buy kroeung roots — galangal, lemongrass, fresh turmeric, kaffir lime zest — then pounding the paste by mortar and cooking amok trey and the sour tamarind soup samlor machu.
A TREE Alliance training restaurant in a wooden villa near Wat Polanka, staffed by former street youth. Small plates run to red tree ants stir-fried with beef and holy basil, crispy Mekong river fish, and stuffed frog legs.
The city's working produce market on National Road 6, two kilometres east of the river: prahok fermented fish paste sold from open vats, discs of palm sugar wrapped in leaf, dried snakehead, and trays of fried tarantula and crickets.
Twin sisters Kimsan Pol and Kimsan Sok run this dining room as a Khmer tasting menu — prahok reworked as a savoury custard, Kampot pepper with river prawn, palm sugar and coconut desserts, all sourced from Cambodian farms.
A roadside village 25 km north of town where a dozen family stalls sell nothing but num banh chok, alongside palm-sugar makers boiling sap in open woks and pressing it into golden discs sold by the bag.
A chef-led kitchen on the Wat Bo side of the river doing modern Khmer in small plates: grilled pork skewers with prahok dip, smoked-fish num banh chok, banana blossom salad with roasted peanut. Open 11:30-22:00.
Cambodia's first craft brewery, in a restored villa off Street 5, pours a tasting paddle of house beers including a Kampot pepper ale, a Khmer wheat and a dark honey porter, with the brewhouse visible behind glass. Open 11:00-23:00.
From dusk the charcoal grills light up for bai sach chrouk pork skewers, sugarcane juice pressed to order, grilled river fish, and kralan — sticky rice with coconut and black beans roasted inside bamboo tubes, then split open.