HAVEN Siem Reap: Our Review of the Training Restaurant You Need to Book

• Type: Training restaurant and social enterprise, lunch and dinner.
• Location: Wat Damnak area, near Pub Street.
• Kitchen: Khmer dishes, fusion specials and Western favourites, with substantial vegetarian and vegan options.
• Google rating: 4.7/5 across more than 2,000 reviews.
• Model: Trainees receive accommodation, a monthly salary, meals, medical care and English lessons.

• A training model with real substance. Since 2011, vulnerable young adults from shelters and poor rural areas have come through HAVEN and left with work skills, life skills and a route to employment. Accommodation, salary, meals, healthcare and English lessons are part of the deal.
• The food stands on its own. Reviewers describe hearty, well-made plates rather than making allowances for the cause — the mark of a training restaurant that has got past its first years.
• Vegetarians and vegans have a real choice. Not an afterthought section but a proper part of the menu.
• Service you notice. Trainees are attentive in a way that regular staff often are not, precisely because they are being taught to be.
• Demand proves the point. It is one of very few Siem Reap restaurants where booking days ahead is genuinely necessary in high season.

• Book ahead. A couple of days in high season. Turning up between November and February is how people end up eating elsewhere.
• Above the town average on price. Reviewers say the money is worth it, and they say so knowing what the alternative costs.
• Service is a training exercise. Occasional hesitation is part of the model, not a fault of it.

HAVEN suits diners who want a good meal and a concrete answer to what their money did.

• Travellers choosing social enterprises: among the most established in Cambodia, running since 2011.
• Vegetarians and vegans: a genuine menu rather than a single plate.
• Couples and small groups: book and the evening runs itself.
• Repeat visitors: the fusion specials change, so the menu rewards coming back.

HAVEN asks a little more than the restaurant next door and gives a young Cambodian adult a trade in return. Fifteen years in, the model is proven and the kitchen no longer needs the cause to justify the bill.

Book it. It is the one reservation in Siem Reap worth planning around.