Phnom Penh Celebrates 38 Years of Cambodian Flavors in Vancouver

Chef Huynh’s restaurant is older than he is but the one constant is the location and the decor. He smiles, “When you come into our restaurant, you kind of go back in time.”

“My [grandparents] started it. They were refugees from Cambodia,” he explains. “When the war happened, they had to escape [and] walk to Vietnam. It took a month. Luckily, they were sponsored to come to Canada as immigrants.”

Opened in conjunction with the Vancouver Expo of 1986, Phnom Penh was, “just a little hug for all the refugees to come. To bring a taste of Cambodia for people who missed home.” Some early dishes included traditional Cambodian amok, dry noodles, and crab rolls (deep fried beancurd rolls filled with a crab mixture).

Soon enough, more Vancouver locals discovered the restaurant, and Phnom Penh became a hit. As popularity grew, Huynh’s grandparents handed the restaurant down to second generation family members, including current Executive Chef Huu Duc Huynh (Murray’s father). “Our family, we have such an affinity for cooking," says chef Murray. "We just love to cook and love to have fun.”

Part of that fun? The constant chatter. “You hear everybody talking," he adds. "It's just literally conversations everywhere. It feels like Asia, loud and vibrant."

Other reminders of home come from the menu including the heartwarming soups and refreshing shakes. Perfect for winter, one classic is a clear pork broth simmered for four hours with a tender pork neck bone. Another is the tamarind hot and sour soup with pineapple, tomatoes, bean sprouts and a choice of locally sourced fish, shrimp, or chicken. In the summer, durian shakes become the perfect chilly refresher.

Located in Vancouver’s Chinatown, Phnom Penh has served as a longstanding anchor for the community. Huynh says, “We source our ingredients within Chinatown because we try to support [the] community. The chicken’s next door, the fish store’s right there, the veggies are right there. We're blessed to be in that location.”

Frequented by celebrity Vancouverites including funnymen Seth Rogen and Jimmy O. Yang, the three most popular dishes today are the chicken wings, butter beef (thinly sliced marinated rare beef) and the beef luc lac (sauteed beef), which draw from other cuisines such as Vietnamese.

Spread by word of mouth, generations of diners come back for more. “Their dads, and their moms would take their kids to here, and then now they're all grown up, and then they take their kids.”

With this foundation, Huynh hopes to lead the restaurant for the rest of his life. “Hopefully I can push it to another 80 or 90 years. If you have a crazy connection to something, then you can actually make it last very long.” In the future, he wants to maintain its consistency, while also finding new ways to improve the food. Every year, his family closes the restaurant for a month to travel to Asia in search of culinary inspiration.

Although most of the team consists of family members and other seasoned veterans, Huynh welcomes new talent, reminiscent of how Canada was so welcoming to his grandfather. “Whoever has the passion to work, a thirst for knowledge, and endurance, I'll teach you everything you need to know,” he says.

“Everyone's very friendly, very open minded, very inclusive," he adds. He likens it to Cambodian culture, where “everybody's really friendly [and] always smiling.”

Chef Huynh himself is a combination of both cultures, so of course, he radiates positivity. He grins, “I like seeing people eat. [Eating is] the way of making people happy. You eat together, have conversations, laugh. Or if you're sad, you can eat and you'll feel better.”

Reflecting on his journey so far, he concludes, “Shout out to my family. I'm very grateful for my parents, my grandfather, and my aunts. They gave us a very great life. They all worked very hard to create something so special for us, and I want to maintain it very well for them. I cherish it very much.”

Hero image: Courtesy of Phnom Penh