PINAK POU.

In a refurbished Khmer wooden house, tucked away behind a pagoda, and across the river from the chaos of Siem Reap’s old market and Pub Street, 28-year-old chef Mork Mengly is reinventing Cambodian cuisine – though he’s too humble to admit it.
“The food here is not very original . . . but I mixed it up,” he said last week in the upstairs kitchen of Pou Restaurant and Bar.

What he means is that the recipes aren’t created purely from his imagination but are rooted in countryside cooking. The core concept behind his menu, which features just a handful of starters, mains and desserts, is to take the type of food eaten in rural homes, on the street and in the “jungle”, and to shake up and reinterpret those recipes. The result is achieved with style and at reasonable prices. “The dishes from . . . the very [real] countryside, and ingredients from the jungle, a lot of people, they don’t know those . . . They’re used to trying usually amok, curry, but I wanted to do something different,” he explains.