You could come to this coast for the beaches and leave talking about the food. Cambodian coastal cooking is fresh, direct and built on what the sea and the nearby hills give up each day, and at its best, eaten at a plastic table with your feet nearly in the sand, it is as good a reason to be here as any beach.
The dish that defines it
Start with Kep crab fried with green Kampot pepper. Blue swimmer crabs, pulled from the sea that morning, are stir-fried whole with clusters of fresh green peppercorns still on the stalk, so the pepper is bright and citrusy rather than fiery. You eat it with your fingers, cracking and sucking and making a mess, with the sea a few steps away. It is one of the great regional dishes of Southeast Asia, and it belongs to this stretch of coast.
Beyond the crab
There is far more than crab. Fish amok, the country's signature dish, is a delicate curry of fish, coconut and the fragrant paste called kroeung, steamed soft in a banana-leaf cup. Whole fish come grilled over coals, squid is charred and dressed with lime and black pepper, and simple plates of morning glory and rice round it out. Much of it is seasoned with Cambodia's prized sea salt, raked from the pans around Kampot and Kep.
Salt, pepper, sea
What ties the coast's cooking together is a trio of local ingredients grown and gathered within a few kilometres of each other, the sea's catch, Kampot's pepper and Kampot's salt. Few coastlines anywhere can plate their own signature spice, their own salt and the morning's fish on a single table. This one can, and does, without fuss.
How to be here
Eat where the boats land and the grills are lit at dusk, order the crab and the amok, and do not worry about the plastic chairs. On this coast, the finest meals are the least formal ones, and the bill is almost always smaller than the memory.