Ottawa Foodies

My wife and I went on Valentine's day, as we had limited time, and it's close by. They were completely overwhelmed having a full restaurant. We ordered spring rolls and chicken satay as appetizers, I had a golden chicken main, and my wife the pad thai. Our spring rolls came out fairly quickly. On of the kitchen staff then brought our food the the table next to us (they happened to order the same thing about 15 minutes after us). They came back about ten minutes later to apologize, at which time we inquired about our other appetizer. It cam a while later, followed by our mains. The table next to us never received their soup appetizer. The food tasted fantastic, excellent spring rolls, and the golden chicken was really good. We were there for over two and a half hours however, most of which was spent waiting. I've been before, and the service was really quick, I just think they were extremely overwhelmed that night, and didn't plan on being that busy.

I went with a friend yesterday for lunch. I ordered the Golden Chicken and he ordered the Lemongrass Beef and we shared both of the dishes. Both were really delicious. The beef was stirfried with onions and red and green peppers - no heavy sauces but quite flavourful. The chicken was also really nice and spicy with a peanut sauce that was quite rich. I do agree with Tiana that there was a lot of rice, but the portions overall were quite generous. We also ordered the Cambodian spring rolls. They were nice and crisp and not greasy -filled with a mixture or ground pork and chicken and vermicelli.

The service was okay - we were greeted as soon as we entered the restaurant and shown to a table. Our drink orders were taken a couple of minutes after we were seated. One of the orders was wrong (Ginger Beef instead of Lemongrass Beef) but the waitress quickly corrected the problem and we had the dish we ordered in less than 5 minutes. The only real criticism I have is that they weren't quick enough with the water refills. The waitress finally came to refill our glasses when we were almost done.

I did enjoy the meal and I do plan on going back.

We went here last night for a birthday dinner with some friends.

I ordered C1 which was chicken in a pinkish sauce with a drizzle of coconut milk and apparently, random basil leaves all on a giant mound of rice.

I found that it was ok but not great. The flavours were simple but not impressive. I'd eat here again if other people were planning a night out and chose this place, but I would never choose it myself.

I tried their seafood rice noodles. The shrimp wasn't fresh (the shrimps smelt!). After the dinner, we wanted to chat a bit longer and the servers just kept looking at us. This bothered us very much and we left and went to Zavida Coffee to continue our conversation. I will not go back again.

Phnom Penh offers four noodle soups that are similar to pho. I tried the S11 Spicy Rice Noodle (Chicken, Meat Balls, Ground Pork, and Shrimps). Very nice indeed! Fairly tasty broth, good spice level, with a generous proportion of hearty noodles. Two shrimp, two or three slices of chicken, and a pile of meatballs kept things interesting.

Here is their famous Golden Chicken curry. I remember enjoying it but not quite as much as I'd hoped given all the rave reviews. Now that I've lowered your expectations a bit you will love it! ;-)

Get the Golden Chicken. Really. NOW! You won't know what hit you. I used to eat this at the Phnom Penh when I went to Queens in Kingston. It's chicken in a rich, spicy, peanut curry. Not sure if it's curry though. The closest comparison to it would be the jungle curry at Royal Thai. But this is much better. A couple of my friends found the medium spicy level too spicy but perfect for me.

We started with the Cambodian spring rolls which were Perfectly crispy and tasty. The peanut sauce with it was good but I nabbed one of my friends sweet fish sauce type sauce which came with his shrimp rolls. I found that went even better.