From Esquire’s 2024 Best Restaurants: Oun Lido’s is a joint venture from Bounahcree “Bones” Kim, a thirty-four-year-old Cambodian American, and Vien Dobui, who runs Công Tử Bột, Portland’s best Vietnamese restaurant. Using Maine’s rightfully lauded ingredients, cooking in a space that’s still in the process of being built out, and tapping into hazy, precious memories of childhood, Bones turns out plates that brilliantly synthesize Cambodian and Cantonese flavors. Baptized in pungent homemade prahok, a Cambodian fish sauce, his beef salad topped with toasted rice powder is a salty-sweet-crunchy-meaty mouth party. The skin on the fried hot lemon chicken is as glassy as the water of Casco Bay. The mee kathung, another Khmer staple, made with broad rice noodles, is tangled with braised beef and served with an unusually rich five-spice gravy. It tastes like home, no matter where home is or what language one uses to describe it.
