On September 9, the number of Cambodian-adjacent restaurants in the capital rockets to a grand total of two, as chef Tom Geoffrey’s Barang takes up residency at Carousel for just five days. It joins London’s only other Cambodian restaurant, Mamapen, itself a semi-permanent residency at The Sun & 13 Cantons in Soho. Geoffrey is hoping five days is long enough to win Londoners over with an open-fire menu inspired by Khmer flavours.
Wedged between Vietnam, Thailand and Laos, and shaped by decades of French rule, Cambodia follows its own culinary playbook. There’s kuyteav, a breakfast noodle soup related to pho, seasoned to taste at the table with herbs and chilli. Kroeung is lemongrass, galangal, fingerroot and other aromatics pounded to a fragrant, oily paste, and the building block of curries, sour soups and stir fries. Fresh coconut waffles and salty-sweet chicken alike are grilled on roadside charcoal fires. Then there’s salty, fermented fish prahok, a pungent seasoning and essential component of a steak dip Khmer-Americans have affectionately nicknamed “crack sauce”.
“You can see from the breadth of cuisines in London and the way that Southeast Asian and East Asian restaurants have developed into more regional cuisines, that there’s an appetite for the unknown, undiscovered stuff,” Kaneda Pen, who helms the capital’s only Khmer joint, Mamapen, tells Broadsheet. He is among the estimated 1000 Cambodians living in the UK. His family made the treacherous journey over from war-torn Cambodia via a Thai refugee camp in the early ’80s. Much of the diaspora, though, headed to the US or France. “There’s definitely a moment happening for Cambodian cuisine, particularly in New York,” says Pen, referencing a new generation of chefs coming of age.
But in London, you’re unlikely to come across a Khmer restaurant on the high street. Pen is using his Soho residency – which launched in August 2024 – to get the word out, with hopes of an expansion next year. His cooking reflects his own style: casual, playful and evolving. Stars of the show are a barbeque chicken, crisp-skinned and smoky from the Kasai grill, and heavily peppered tattie mince (braised beef mince) noodles – the result of an experiment with his Scottish partner. “I just don’t think we should be burdened by authenticity or bogged down by it,” he says. He often takes to social media to defend the “authenticity” of his dishes.
Barang’s Geoffrey, who “got the bug” for Khmer cooking after a trip to Cambodia in 2017, was at first nervous of showing his face on Instagram. “The biggest compliment I used to get was from people from Southeast Asian backgrounds who were following me on Instagram,” he tells Broadsheet. “They were like, oh, shit, I thought you were Asian.” He insists that, for him, cooking another culture’s cuisine is all about respect. He travels regularly to Cambodia, staying for weeks to develop a “fundamental understanding of the history of the cuisine, where the cuisine sits now in the world, where it sits in its own country”. He’s popped up at Oranj and Hill & Szrok, among others, and collabed with rising star Tim Pheak at Phnom Penh’s Bai Sor, as well as chef Chakriya Cha at Khmer restaurant Bong in New York.
In his own cooking he advocates for “being as sustainable as possible”, substituting imported fruit and herbs with local produce. At Carousel, for example, he’s planned a duck breast with a long pepper curry paste (his own riff on kroeung, using prized peppers from Kampot), with greengage in lieu of longan. He’s proud, too, of being the only chef in the UK to offer prahok ktis – a dipping sauce typically made with minced pork, but here with venison – on his menu. A bold move for London’s unaccustomed palate.
Barang is at Carousel from September 9–13. Mamapen has an ongoing residency at The Sun & 13 Cantons.
