Alan G.
Yelp
So first up, if you're into Philly/NJ hidden gems, you have to follow JL Jupiter on YouTube, he had an amazing episode about this location and got us to want to try it.
Second of all, GPS originally said it would be an hour and a half drive from where we live. WHen we got in to leave this morning, it was at 2 hours, all said and done with all the weather, construction, traffic, it took 2 hours and 40 minutes. I was in a pretty bad mood going into this restaurant but I will say things changed quickly.
Service was amazing and fast. We had water and our appetizers before we could even use the restrooms and wash our hands. We went with the fried dough and papaya salad. The fried dough is not sweet, it's more savory, and there appeared to be nothing special about it but we both couldn't stop eating it! The papaya salad, it was not for us. The fish sauce was super heavy and we didn't' taste a lot of papaya, but it had great potential just did not meet what we were looking for (hey you can't like EVERYTHING).
The meals came out super fast as well. She opted for the dry noodles (C1 on the menu) and I opted for the soup (B1 on the menu). Similar ingredients but entirely different presentation. The dry noodles were something I look forward to having next time as the adding your own layers of spice and liquid as you eat is something that seemed really awesome.
As for my soup, The Phnom Penh Style. I'm going to say I love pho and I love ramen. This was a similar yet much more satisfying experience. The pork broth was outstanding, the shrimp were tender and delicious, all the organ meats were cooked amazing as well. We had a similar problem with traffic going home and I kept thinking about how satisfying and filling it was.
On the table they had these pickled peppers which I also highly recommend trying, they added a nice spicy sour punch to the bites! You also had hoisin, sriracha, seasoning sauce and chili oil available to use as well.
The service , as I said before was outstanding, everyone stopped by to check on you and we never needed to ask for anything. Even though the papaya salad wasn't' really our style, we still ate most of it, the fried dough was outstanding and both main dishes were exceptional.
The restaurant was very minimally decorated but done nicely and not overdone. The owner was walking around talking to his regulars so you really got the feel that this was a neighborhood spot!
If we lived closer we would be here weekly, but at a 2.5 hour possible drive time, it's still something we will do. When we were talking about the meal there were a lot of "next time I'm ordering this" type of comments as we want to try more Cambodian cuisine, something that does not exist where we live unfortunately.
Long story short, we drove 7 hours round trip (shopped the Asian market in the parking lot and stopped a brewery on the way home) for lunch... and we're talking about doing it again.