Best places to eat with kids in Cambodia

I'm pretty sure that there's no shortage of good food in Cambodia but we don't take meat while on holidays and hence our options were limited to seafood-based or vegetarian meals. Being a pescetarian in Cambodia was not too difficult as the Mekong River ensured constant supply of seafood. However, having had the same dishes over and over again, there were moments when I could not stomach another plate of rice with fish/squid/prawn, kampot green pepers notwithstanding. Snufkin too is a not a rice person so and there was no way that I could persuade him to try fish amok.

But all was not lost. As in Laos, Cambodia has its share of bakeries and restaurants serving Western/fusion food suitable for kids who prefer their comfort food.

Here's three of our favourites:

1) Blue Pumpkin

 
The Blue Pumpkin is an all-in-one french bakery, patisserie, ice-cream parlour and restaurant. They have several outlets in Siem Reap but the one we frequented was the one on Sivatha Street, just a couple of minutes walk from our hotel. The restaurant also had a nice set-up, with day-beds on which you can lounge the afternoon away.

The first food that I had there was their goi cuon springrolls (with shrimp and vegetable filling, served with hoi sin sauce). It tasted homemade and fresh - I was hooked. Snufkin's favourite was the margherita pizza, and of course, the ice-cream. There's a lot of other options for kids and adults alike, both Western and Asian (including Khmer) food. Suffice to say that most of Snufkin's meal in Siem Reap came from Blue Pumpkin.

So if you're wondering what to eat in Siem Reap and do not feel adventurous enough to try the Cambodian street food, then this is a good place to start.

My staple food in Seam Reap



2) Kaya Cafe

We came across this place by accident. We had been walking in the Old Market area in Siem Reap for ages and was looking for a place to sit down and have coffee. Kaya Cafe was chosen because it had the least crowd - in fact, there were no customers at all when we got there. I later got to know that it was just recently opened (by the same people who owned Senteurs d'Angkor) so probably that explained the lack of customers at that time.

We ordered mango sorbet for Snufkin, iced coffee, passionfruit smoothie and a Khmer dessert which was a mixture of steamed banana, grated coconut and palm sugar. These are common ingredients in Malaysia but that dessert I had in Kaya Cafe tasted out of this world. It has got to be the perfect texture of the banana and the freshness of the ingredients, especially the palm sugar. I am salivating as I write this.

This cafe would be one of my main reasons for any repeat visit to Siem Reap.



Photo credit: Kaya Spa & Cafe

 

3) Le Jardin Restaurant

 

This restaurant in Phnom Penh has got to be the one of the most kids-family restaurants that I have ever come across. I just wish that we have something like this in Malaysia.

You can enjoy your food while your kids run loose in the sandpit/treehouse area. I have written a bit more about this place here.

And of course, at the end of the day, there's always the banana and nutella pancake that you can get from one of the carts!