Coffee and Café Culture in Siem Reap & Angkor Wat
A visual guide from the Siem Reap and Angkor Wat travel guide — see all posters in Visual Guides.
Two coffee cultures run side by side here. On almost any Siem Reap street corner someone is pulling dark, bitter robusta through a cloth sock filter into a glass of condensed milk and ice — kafé tuk doh koh, sweet enough to stand a spoon in and usually under a dollar. A few minutes away, in Kandal Village and along Wat Bo Road, small cafés serve single-origin Cambodian arabica from Mondulkiri and Ratanakiri as filter or flat white, and fill up from breakfast onward with people working through the hot middle of the day.
Where to sit
Kandal Village, the two-block boutique strip on Hup Guan Street, has the densest run of specialist cafés and is about ten minutes on foot from the Old Market. Along the river, Sister Srey Café on Pokambor Avenue is a long-running training café facing the Old Market bridge and good for a slow breakfast. The Wat Bo side of the river is quieter, with garden cafés set back off the road and dependable air conditioning. For the local version, look for the glass jars and hanging cloth filter at any market corner — Psar Chas and Psar Leu both have several — and drink it standing at the counter.
What to order, and when
Ask for kafé tuk doh koh for iced coffee with condensed milk, or kafé khmao for it black and unsweetened. Either arrives strong: Cambodian robusta is often roasted with butter and sugar, which gives it that dark, almost smoky edge. Specialist cafés will usually offer both a Cambodian single origin and imported beans, and iced filter holds up better than espresso in this heat. Prices split cleanly — a street glass is around a dollar, a café flat white three to four. The good hours are before nine in the morning, when the temple crowds have already left town and the cafés are at their calmest.