Must-try Specialties Of Battambang

Specialities of Battambang

Being the Cambodia’s second city, with less crowded tourists, city of Battambang, set in an agriculturally-rich region, is one of the best places in the country to sample the most authentic presentation of Cambodian dishes. You can taste its specialities at stalls along streets, fresh markets, local eateries, foodie tours, a stylish restaurant, and even a boutique hotel restaurant.

Kuy Teav - A pork noodle broth

Battambang’s typical breakfast is kuy teav, a pork noodle broth, and you’ll spot it being slurped at markets and stalls all over the city.

A famous address to try Kuy Teav is at Mrs Te Lieng and Mr Lee Mun’s soup joint in Wat Kor village.

Tourist mostly chose the version of Kuy Teav with succulent pork slices served atop the noodles, however, locals prefer the addition of offal, including liver, intestines, lung, and heart. It will be tastier by adding some chilli, lime and fresh herbs. You can have Kuy Teav with the deep fried bread sticks or youtiao —  ‘Chinese doughnuts’ — are for dipping in the soup.

Street food tour

You can taste all below dishes by joining our street food tour, contact us for further details:

Nom krok - Fried coconut and rice flour cakes: Cooked in a cast-iron pan with moulds over a charcoal fire in many variations.

Son vac - Fish paste grilled in banana leaves: wrap it in lettuce and eat with the cold noodles, basil, saw-tooth coriander and tangy sauce can be an amazing cuisine experience you should try.

Pong tia koun - Boiled balut: first drinking the warm savory broth from the shell that we created, adding salt, pepper and lime juice.

Banh ja’neuk - a Khmer dessert: Rice-flour balls stuffed with mung bean paste, which she drowns in coconut milk and tapioca, douses with some ginger syrup, and sprinkles with sesame seeds.

Sach ko ang – BBQ beef: Beef skewers, ucculent from the pork fat placed between the beef pieces, and aromatic and sweet from the lemongrass kroeung, made it a favourist by tourist and also local people. They are well and truly worth the wait.

Experiencing at a truly local favourite restaurant, escorting by your guide

Try at least one go to the local favourite, a riverside restaurant called Mlob Chan or The Shade of the Nutmeg Tree, for a typically Battambang experience. The restaurants don’t have a menu and guests simply order their favourite dishes. Locals like to stay for hours here, eating and drinking beers while swinging in the hammocks to observe the river. Such a relax to having food while admire the beautiful scene overlooking the river! The delicious foods served here include stir-fried morning glory with garlic; wok-fried chicken dipped with lemon and garlic salt; prahok with kroeung, grilled in banana leaf; grilled goby fish with salt, eaten with tamarind paste, chili and garlic; fresh green beans, baby eggplant, cucumber and cabbage; and of course - the rice, all arranged on a colourful mat on the bamboo floor. Just simple, fresh and tasty.

Café Kinyei

Where coffee lovers shouldn’t miss and there, you will find Cambodia’s best coffee. This is a social enterprise aimed at providing training and employment for young locals, on dusty Street 1½ in the heart of the old city. It is decorated with rustic wooden furniture and flowers on the tables, set in a renovated colonial-era Chinese shop-house.

Tasting takeaway food

Paradise of takeaway food is outside Psar Naht market.

There, you could find grilled salted fish, barbecuing meats and offal, and savory soups and stews. This is also one favourite of locals to buy their dinner.

There are many stalls selling barbecue — fish cakes, hot wings, pork, quails, sweet Cambodian sausages, and chickens that deeply seasoned in the sauce of kroeung, oil and red chilli.

Beside BBQ foods, there are stalls selling soups, stews and curries. A lot of specialties include char kroeung (a kroeung-based dry curry dish made of chicken, duck or cat fish) and samlors (stew curry soup), including samlor machou youn (sweet and sour vegetable soup with pineapple, tomato, watermelon and tamarind, and vegetables); samlor machou, a typically-sour countryside soup made with green papaya, spicy basil and smoked fish; sgnor, a clear chicken broth fragrant with lemongrass and kaffir lime; samlor trayong chek, made with banana blossom and tamarind; and samlor machou kroeung that looks like a watery curry but is actually a rich, flavourul koeung-based soup.

Lot of other foods that you find and try here: succulent rotisserie chickens and ducks, sold with bags of fresh greens, cucumbers and fragrant herbs; amok trey, Cambodia’s national dish that has a texture that falls somewhere between a souffle and mousse, made from fish and a curry paste that’s been steamed in banana leaf and in Battambang it’s always made with goby fish. Please note: for Cambodians, there’s no such thing as chicken amok or beef amok or tofu amok – these are dishes to specifically served tourists). Also try char kdao, a kroeung-based duck dish with hot basil, and char kgney, a light chicken and ginger stir-fry.