Selantra Restaurant & Lounge

Business Overview

#0729, Wat Bo Street, Opposite of French Cultural Center (CCF) Siem Reap, Cambodia.

THE SELANTRA RESTAURANT, located on Wat Bo Road, formerly the Honolulu Café, has been reborn as a Khmer-language twist on the Spanish word cilantro, otherwise known as coriander. The revamped SELANTRA, twice the size of the former Honolulu Café, has been trendily redesigned and will double as an art gallery.

Overview of Selantra Restaurant & Lounge

Set in a two renovated traditional shop houses, Selantra is Siem Reap's newest high quality dining experience. Architecturally designed, the stylish interior is both relaxed and contemporary. Featuring high ceilings, a dramatic skylight and lounge area, Selantra's layout offers choice and is both spacious and flexible. Perfect for formal and informal dining, the layout has been specifically designed to comfortably accommodate large groups with ease, whilst still providing intimacy.

Selantra's food offers a carefully prepared mix of Khmer and International cuisine for all palettes, designed by chefs who have worked in a number of 5 star hotels. Accommodating groups of up to 185 for lunch or dinner, the menu is balanced perfectly with an extensive wine, drinks and cocktail selection.

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About Selantra Restaurant & Lounge

The debut art exhibition featured the charcoal works of Phnom Penh's Em Riem. Later, other emerging Khmer artists will be featured. The proprietor, 24-year-old Khoy Dara, has also revamped the menu and teamed up with experienced chef Chamroeun, who has worked at several Siem Reap hotels, including the Day Inn Angkor Resort. The duo has collaborated to design signature salads and original sauces and, according to Khoy Dara, a highlight of the new menu is the special pepper sauce served up with sirloin steaks.

Khoy Dara himself is one of the success stories of Siem Reap's tourism sector. When he was nine years old, Khoy Dara was taken in by the Sunrise Angkor Children's Village orphanage. As a teenager, he worked as a waiter in hotels and eventually became the Assistant Restaurant Manager at the Cafe de la Paix. While still working in that position, in 2007 he doubled up his workload by setting up the Honolulu Cafe and has now reinvested capital to reopen as the SELANTRA, which is now his full-time job.

He admits that he has taken a big risk and that he worries about the economic crisis and the sharp drop in tourist numbers. "Everything is also more expensive now. A really good coffee machine can be US$8,000," he said. So far, however, the success of the new restaurant is encouraging.

Khoy Dara has ample motivation to succeed - at 24 he is also the head of a large household. He adopted four orphans, now aged 7 to14, from the Cambodian-Thai border when he was little more than a child himself. "There was no one to take care of them, no one to give money, no one to give food - so I brought them to live with me. "This is also one of the reasons he has involved his restaurant in supporting children in his community.