Kampot · Food

Kampot's main market, west of the old town, best in the morning for noodle soup, fruit and pepper sold loose by weight. The cooked-food end gives you a proper Khmer breakfast for the price of a coffee on the riverfront.

The strip along the east bank is where Kampot eats at sunset — Khmer plates, curries, river fish and wood-fired pizza, all with the same view of Bokor turning pink. Two or three times market prices, and you are paying for the water.

Fresh green pepper still on the stem is the local thing, used in stir-fries rather than dried, and the harvest runs roughly February to May. Order anything cooked with it — crab, squid, beef — and buy dried black, red and white by weight at the market.

Rice noodles under a fish and lemongrass gravy with a heap of raw herbs, sold from carts and market stalls from dawn and gone by mid-morning. It costs about a dollar, it is what Kampot actually eats before work, and no riverfront kitchen does it as well.