Dining here funds Friends-International programmes that support families in need. Photo / Sarah Schmitt
Phnom Penh’s Friends Restaurant blends vibrant Cambodian flavours with a strong social mission, training young people for hospitality careers while serving memorable meals, writes Sarah Schmitt.
I pulled my old travel journal from 2007 off the shelf. I was planning a return trip to Cambodia and wanted to check the details from my first visit to a wonderful restaurant: a social enterprise called Friends, and I hoped it was still around.
I remember the night clearly because of the way the experience made me feel. Cambodia felt heavy to me on that first visit. It was confronting and, at times, overwhelming. But that meal had also felt hopeful.
Friends the Restaurant was - and still is - a social enterprise that trains at-risk youth for careers in hospitality, building a pathway out of poverty. Students learn all aspects of restaurant operations, from kitchen skills to service and management, while social workers support their home lives and ensure access to education.
In 2007, I even bought their first cookbook, and the trainees working that evening signed the inside cover. Opening it again nearly two decades later, I ran my fingers over their names, wondering where life had taken them.
Food is often the first way we experience a country, with the menu serving as a point of entry into our understanding of where we are. It’s simple, accessible and immediate. What I didn’t realise in 2007 was that my meal was part of a multi-layered support model, designed not just to serve visitors but to build long futures.
Fast forward to the present, and Friends the Restaurant is still in the same premises. Local artwork still lines the exposed brick walls, and the industrial-style space is brightly lit with warm lighting, making it open and welcoming. These days, however, the venue is part of a bigger complex known as F3 (Friends Futures Factory), a creative hub with shops, a gallery and courtyard workshop space. Looking around, it’s clear this is an ecosystem where layers of support fit together, rebuilding lives.
I observe the staff moving around the open kitchen, busy getting ready for service. A young waiter approaches us, his broad smile and sparkling eyes welcome us and it’s clear this is a restaurant that prides itself on its service, which is warm and full of heart. I order a gin and tonic to start with, a perfect remedy for the suffocating heat, and tried to imagine the lives some of these young people may have endured.
The restaurant is part of Friends-International, an NGO founded in 1994, whose mission is to “save lives and build futures”. It was one of the first NGOs in Cambodia to put systems in place to stabilise the living situations of at-risk children, before providing education and vocational training.
International communications coordinator of Friends-International James Sutherland explains: “We wanted to do something sustainable, that was impactful, but also something that, quite importantly too, would raise money to enable us to do the social work”.
Over the years, the NGO has created a model in which social enterprise and tourism work hand in hand. The restaurant provides real-world experience while generating income to sustain the broader programmes that help build long-term futures.
Restaurants sit at the centre of the tourism economy, so training young people in hospitality is strategic. It places them inside one of the country’s most important economic engines, providing them with more opportunities to find and retain long-term employment.
Today, Friends-International provides training across industries, including hospitality, construction, mechanics and roles in the beauty industry. “Cambodia is still a very young country,” James says. “We want to train people in skills in which they are guaranteed to secure employment, because that’s our mission – to build that future and make sure that future is stable.” The NGO also runs multiple projects across programme groups, providing services from outreach, to migration support and child protection.
During Covid, the restaurant in its original form had to close. Needing to keep training going for their students, it pivoted, becoming emergency support. “We kind of became a big soup kitchen, because there were thousands of families across the city who were under quarantine,” James explains. When restrictions eased, they reintroduced their social businesses and reopened Friends the Restaurant alongside 3F.
Returning to Cambodia nearly 20 years later, I was quietly looking for signs of change. In 2007, poverty affected around half the population and by 2012, surveys suggest it had fallen to under 20%, though rural hardship remained.
On that first visit, the streets were filled with many very young children. While in Siem Reap, I visited the temples, as you do. I remember at Angkor Wat, clusters of kids peered up at me, hands outstretched, selling bracelets and trinkets. It was overwhelming, and a heaviness lingered long after the trip ended.
Cambodia’s recent history explains much of this hardship. The Khmer Rouge regime of 1975–79 killed up to a quarter of the population, leaving the country fractured.
Reconstruction in the late 1990s involved an influx of international NGOs, and the country opened to tourism. But poverty persisted, and children worked on the streets instead of going to school, to help their families survive.
It was in this context that Friends-International emerged, focusing on early intervention and family support, moving children back into education, and practical training pathways linked to real employment.
In 2005, Friends-International launched the Child Safe Movement, partnering with hotels to train staff and provide accreditation that ensures establishments are “child safe”. It’s a reassurance many travellers actively seek, given Cambodia’s history of child exploitation.
Now, walking through Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, the difference was clear. The street children were absent. That doesn’t mean poverty has disappeared. “It’s more pushed away from the central areas,” James offers. But it does suggest that long-term, structured interventions are working.
At the restaurant, northern Thai chicken curry with crispy noodles arrived, fragrant and generous. The menu blends Cambodian and Western flavours, appealing to visitors while supporting local livelihoods. Choosing where to have dinner is one of the simplest economic decisions a visitor makes, and when that choice supports a business model like this, something ordinary becomes quietly powerful.
After dinner, we wandered to the retail store. On my first visit, it was part of the restaurant. Now it occupies its own space. Shelves are filled with handmade products, created through other Friends-International social enterprise programmes and mostly by the parents and grandparents of young people in the hospitality training course. I dipped my hands into large bowls of handmade beads, lifting them so they fell between my fingers, their colours vibrant and beautiful. But it was the jewellery that caught my eye. I chose a pair of earrings, as I always do when I travel. Small, portable memory keepers.
Cambodia doesn’t need more saviours. It needs sustained, locally grounded solutions, such as those provided by Friends International. But as visitors, our role is not insignificant. We choose where to spend our money and how we engage with the community, and sometimes that choice begins with something as simple as a menu.
I still have that original cookbook on my shelf at home. I don’t know where those young trainees are today, but sitting in Friends the Restaurant again, watching another generation learn skills that will carry them into the future, I felt something different from my first visit. Instead of helplessness, I felt hope and a clearer understanding that even a single meal can be an entry point to something far larger than itself.
M’Lop Tapang works with children, young people and families in Sihanoukville, providing education, specialised services and practical support to disadvantaged communities. Its vocational training equips youth aged 15 and over with marketable skills, from motorbike repair and electrical work to cooking and hospitality, alongside safe job placements and follow-up support.
Epic Arts is based in Kampot. It’s a disability-inclusive social enterprise creating meaningful employment for people with and without disabilities. Through arts, hospitality and community initiatives, it promotes inclusion while building skills, confidence and financial independence.
Spoons supports underprivileged young adults to become self-sufficient through education, training and employment in Cambodia’s hospitality sector. By pairing hands-on learning with real-world experience, it creates sustainable routes into long-term careers.
Krousar Thmey delivers initiatives spanning child welfare, inclusive education for deaf and blind children, cultural development, career counselling and health. Guided by its principle of projects led by Cambodians for Cambodians, the organisation focuses on locally driven, lasting impact.
The writer travelled at their own expense.