Kampuchea Noodle Bar

This is a new Cambodian restaurant in the LES, and it's delicious! They have lots of meat-heavy items on the menu, but a nice veg selection as well.

Can we talk about the cocktails first? They had some that were so good! Their coconut mojito is yummy. It was delicious but not too sweet. I also tried a really good mango caipirinha. And probably the best drink I tried was made with vanilla vodka, jackfruit puree, and ginger.

The cocktails were in good company, though, because the food was also delicious. We started with the pickle plate, which was fun, but really just too many pickles for us. It had pickled cabbage, daikon, mango, radish, and cucumber.

We also had the one vegetarian crepe on the menu. It contained squash, bean sprouts, edamame, and onions. All the veggies had a great grilled flavor. It came with lettuce leaves to wrap the veggies in, and raw bean sprouts, basil leaves, and lime. Then the crepe was made of rice flour and coconut. It wasn't that flavorful...especially compared to the veggies, but had a fun texture and chewiness factor.

Then we had the vegetarian noodle option, the tofu katiev. The bowl contains rice noodles, tofu, squash, mushrooms, and broth. It was good, but not anything super-special. I took the leftover noodles for lunch the following day, and I think they were better then...maybe because they weren't competing with all of the other delicious food?

My favorite of the things we ordered was the grilled eggplant num pang. It's a sandwich on a baguette with grilled eggplant and other veggies. It comes with chili mayo, so we ordered it without. I'm sure it's great with the mayo, but I really didn't miss it. The sandwich was really yummy and garlicky, and the baguette was wonderfully crusty. There were ill effects on my breath for a good 12 to 16 hours after, but it was worth it. The sandwich was definitely the best thing I ate at Kampuchea, and it had some tough competition.

Aside from the incredible food and drinks, the restaurant was also just a really fun place to be. It's very cute and simply decorated with an open kitchen. The servers were incredibly friendly and helpful without being annoying, and there was just a nice warm feeling about the place.