Chez Sovan

Over due review… I have been here a few times over the years, but went heer agin last week for a friends B Day. We really liked the choice and selection of items, you can mix it up family style. we liked everything, except the Amok… Yes it looks great int he banana leaf, but it really was missing something, spices or flavors or sauce, so next time this will be on our pass list.
The staff was super nice and very busy, but be warned they do not have AC, so on a hot day be ready to get hot or take the order to go.

Not Cambodia, but as close as you can get around here.
The place could use a cosmetic makeover /​update. Service was exceptionally good.

Amazing food, always consistent with delivering some of the best curry I’ve tasted! Love this place.

The location is kind of random. I wanted to go to the one on Oakland Rd (bars on the window made it seem more authentic), but the other location is only open for lunch on weekdays. This location is pretty spacious and was pretty empty on Saturday afternoon (we came at a weird time).
Service was prompt and friendly, and they refilled water without being asked, which is rare for an Asian restaurant.
— Shrimp skewer: a good value — $ 2.50 for 4 shrimp on a skewer. They’re peeled already, and thy have tons of flavor. The flavor reminds me of Vietnamese BBQ
— Beef skewer: tender, well seasoned, also a good value for $ 2.50 per skewer
— #66: Stir fried bamboo: we got it with chicken (chicken thigh). The basil flavor was good, and it wasn’t too oily
— #33 Kuy Tiew Cha: like a slightly more saucy pad Thai. We got the shrimp one and the shrimp was way over cooked, but the noodle flavor and texture were good
I would come back for those skewers and noodles. I just wish it were closer to where I live.

I was so happy to find this location because it’s open on the weekend! I usually go to the location in San Jose during the week for lunch, but I don’t always have time to make it out there.
My all time favorite and go to:
— chicken curry
— BBQ sticks (beef and chicken)
— Amok
If I go with more people, we tend to order their version of the shrimp pad Thai! It’s similar, but sweeter. I love it! I love everything about this place: the food, the servers are so nice and helpful, parking is easy, and the food is delicious! One of my favorites in the area, hands down!

We went for dinner. The waitress was super nice and friendly. The table smelled a bit — the whole place needs a bit of cleansing — but most importantly good was very good. We just loved amok fish, shrimp rolls and chicken something plus #52 noodle. Good experience in food. Btw, there were no customers almost.

Great selection of dishes from South West Asia.
Try their kabobs. Sweetly marinated and good portion for $ 2.50.

I came here on Cambodian new year. I was so glad it was open. I got the amok (steamed fish wrapped in a leaf). I liked it. Definitely, a Cambodian dish but with a little twist. If you ever had the real amok, it supposed to be more salty-​er, and you supposed to eat it with cucumbers or some type of veggie.
Second I had the chicken curry. Great dish. Felt like it was too Thai food.

Fish Amok is amazing! Their overall food taste is good, but the restaurant is quite empty, almost always. Not sure whether that is due to their location or something else

Great service, good food. First time trying Cambodian food. It’s similar to Thai food, I like it! They offer brown rice for the healthy folks. I loved my fresh coconut juice because I could carve the delicious meat afterwards. Yum!

Amok! You may not know what that is, but once you come here you’ll definitely walk out a fan. It’s their most popular dish made of soft fish, lemongrass, coconut, soft tofu and more goodness. It doesn’t look good, not by any means. When you open the banana leaf wrapper it just looks like a pile of mush, but it is tasty. Around $ 10 and eat it with rice and fresh chili peppers.
The Cambodian chicken noodle soup was also tasty. Though simple, it had great hints of lemon and lemongrass, great for a cold day. I think I should have opted for a more unique and powerful dish, maybe a Cambodian curry. I’ll save that for next time.
The have another location downtown that’s lunch only, so happy to see a 2^nd location and it has Eat24 delivery. Amok to my door (plus more), um yes please!!!

I normally go to the Chez Sovan Oakland Rd location. Driving a friend to Santa Cruz I decided to give the Campbell location a try for lunch. Arrived @ noon.
Immediately upon entering we were greeted by a friendly smiling waitress and shown to our table. There was a space heater on the shelf next to our table blowing very warm air which I moved so it blew away from my head. Prior review of the menu I knew what to order. Already seated were two women and small boy and at another table 2 gents finishing their meal. No one entered Chez while we ate. Two gents came when we were leaving. Big hint of no patrons = crummy food.
Here’s my thoughts:
Service: ***** Stars — Friendly, courteous and professional. Water, even though not asked for, served promptly. Menus provided and order taken quickly. I could hear only one wok working which made our order delivery a slow 20 minute wait as we waited for the other table to get served first. Yeech, how long would we wait if there were three or four tables in front of us?
We ordered:
Watercress salad with tofu ***** Stars — Big oval plate with a heaping mound of young crispy watercress smothered in a light fish sauce vinaigrette. Tofu were french fry sliced lightly grilled. Salad room temp, tofu warm of the grill — NICE. Got over the fish sauce smell and enjoyed the wonderful flavor. This dish was the bomb, oh-​so delishus.
Small beef SamLaw Machou Kroeng * Star — Very soupy, small amounts of chile flakes and an overdoes of black pepper makes this on the peppery side. This dish has a strong galangal with mild kafir lime flavor and a hint of lemongrass. It’s more on the sour spicy side rather than sweet. The BIG downside was the leather like t-​o-​u-​g-​h beef slivers and sparse amount of green beans. Horrible!
Chicken Wintermelon Soup — * Star — Served piping hot. Good amount of melons but close to raw. Has an extreme amounts of black pepper which overcame the mild soup and wintermelon flavors. I would call this «large amount of black pepper soup with wintermelon with tough, chewy and overcooked chicken slivers and chicken bits.» Horrible!
Jasmine rice — **** Stars — One heaping 6 inch soup bowl enough for both of us. A little on the sticky side yet tasty.
Tea — ** Stars — Hot but very mild flavored yellow tea. MEH
Too many misses to go back and try other dishes. I do like the assortment of dishes but not the mediocre cooking. I will stick with Oakland Rd.

I don’t think that Cambodian food is really my thing after trying it for the first time here, so keep that in mind. The menu in general seemed to be a mix of Chinese and Thai influences (don’t quote me on that though).
There’s a very extensive selection of things to choose from, which could either be a good or bad thing depending on how indecisive you are. I decided to family-​style three dishes with two other friends: Beef, Chicken, and Pork Kebabs, Fish Amok, and Samlaw Chicken Curry. Note: the curry doesn’t come with rice so you have to order that on the side. We ordered a large bowl of rice and it comes in the coolest tin-​like container. That amount of rice is good for 3 – 4 people, I would estimate.
The kebabs were really really good, would definitely recommend. I can’t remember now which one I liked the best but I think chicken might have been the best.
I know that everyone raves about the amok, but to be honest, it wasn’t really my thing. The texture of the food was very strange, definitely hard to get used to. But give it a try and see for yourself!
The curry was also good, tasted like your standard Thai curry. Nothing else really to say.
This place definitely has the family dining restaurant vibe, so I guess it’d be a good place to go with your parents or something. Everything was good and I left satisfied, but I don’t think I would come back again.

Amok and beef satay were really great. If you have not tried Prahok Ktis, you should because it’s a great traditional dish made with ground pork, anchovies, and coconut milk. It’s served with fresh cucumber, egg plant and green beans.
The stewed dishes were weak and not so authentic. They should remove them from the menu if they are not going to cook them the traditional way. It seems like the chef took the lazy approach.

Ordered take out from here and was pleased with the results!
We ordered for two and will have leftovers for a few days for sure.
The Tofu fresh rolls were awesome– packed full of fresh crunchy veggies. The only thing missing was a peanut sauce– this was served with fresh crushed peanuts and a sweet vinegar sauce.
The Papaya salad was quite spicy and flavorful but not quite to our liking so we set this dish aside.
The Wintermelon soup was AWESOME. The broth was light, the tofu and melon were soft and flavorful and overall this was my favorite.
The steamed vegetables were fine but definitely seemed like a regular serving of steamed frozen veggies.
Finally we tried the Cha Pseat, very good with big soft mushrooms and small pieces of chicken. We liked everything about this dish except that the chicken pieces were nearly too small to be detected.
Overall would definitely recommend trying, the delivery was a solid choice and top picks would be the Fresh Rolls and Wintermelon Soup!

Very rarely I give less than 5 stars, but this will be very fair for this place.
Pros:
–close to our place
–not loud
–something new
–big portions
–not very expansive
Cons:
–too greasy
–too spicy
–too sloppy
–too slow
–too hot in there, no a/​c and smell is weird
–place is too old and wear and tear signs are everywhere
–they do not have half of the products that are in the menu
–beef was the worst ever
–part of the food was overcooked
–no music at all
We ordered amok fish (overcooked, but nice seasoning), papaya salad (strange aftertaste, hella spicy, and weid two huge pieces of cabbage on the plate… why?) Rice plate with bbq beef (worst of all (((
Green beans and shrimp (nice sauce, but greasy and like 3 shrimp for the whole plate… c’mon guys.)

If one day, you cannot decide to eat between Chinese/​Thai/​Viet food, go eat Cambodian food! I have never had Cambodian food before until I came here on a Friday night. I was surprised that the restaurant was pretty empty since I’ve heard that this is a pretty good restaurant.
I was in a party of 4 and we ordered chicken and shrimp skewers for appetizers, fish amok, papaya salad, string beans, fish curry, and a noodle dish (it reminds me of pad thai. sorry, i forgot what it’s called)! The skewers were barbequed really well and had great flavors. The fish amok was something different to me. I never had it before. It is basically fish wrapped in banana leaf. The fish was very sweet and creamy. The papaya salad was also really good! I feel that it has very similar ingredients as the Thai or Viet’s version of papaya salad, however the sauce for this one is sweet instead of having a sour or chili sauce to compliment it. It came with carrots, tomatoes and a few other ingredients along with cabbage on the side. The string beans were cooked pretty well with black beans. The fish curry was excellent. It did not disappoint me at all since I am a big fan of curry. The noodle dish was also really good. It came with peanuts. If you like pad thai, you would definitely like this dish.
I really like the historic decorations and portraits on the wall. It really reminded me of Asia.
Service was also excellent. I will definitely come back!

Hmmm — Cambodian food, I don’t believe I have ever had it… sorta like Thai/​Chinese.
This place has two locations and the downtown one is not open in weekends. I am annoyed writing this because I had a list of what we ordered to write this and now I cannot find it.
But let me start in reverse. SAVE room for the fried banana! — crispy and worth every calorie. Our waitress said the mango rice dessert was even better, so we’ll see on that.
We ordered a lot of food for 4 people, I think It was $ 90 for 4 without tip and including a bottle of $ 25 chardonnay.
What I remember we ordered:
* 2 beef sticks and 1 pork stick, the Beef sticks were my 2^nd favorite, really yummy.
* Spring rolls — good and standard, but WAY too many in an order — like 10 of them… they should offer a ½ order
* Chicken salad, good, but would be better if it was a hour older for the cabbage to soften a bit
* A sweet and sour tofu (that is not what it was called, but it was good)
* A tofu curry — good, next time we’ll order it with a meat
* A wide flat noodle with broccoli and fried eggs on top — good, but a little greasy
* White rice
* Fried banana with green tea ice cream for dessert — MUST order.
Next time I go back — I will get the beef sticks and the banana and then try a bunch of other stuff, it was a solid dinner choice. But I think you need at least 4 people to go, or you can only get a couple things b/​c the portions are so large.
Service was fine but a bit spotty, they left us hanging after our meal, and we had to flag someone down. But overall it was fine, she said we ordered too much food, but I think it was all a good value

Amok, oh baby, make it last forever, you know who you are.
I got Catfish Amok and the more I dug into it, the more the flavors started to activate so each bite kept getting better. I just ate it a minute ago and writing this is still making my mouth water.
They have a Chicken Watercress Soup that makes you feel healthier consuming it. When you ask for extra chilies, they come out frozen and you toss them into your soup.
They also offer Hawaiian beer which is fascinating because you can tell it was created to refresh hot island days.
I love their décor, even the rice bowl was gorgeous.
Friendly service
5 stars

I’ve had Cambodian food before, and I loved it because it’s tasty and unique, unlike Thai food which is tasty but commonplace. I was therefore ecstatic to find Chez Sovan to satisfy my cravings (and curiosity) for exotic stir-​fry noodles and mouth-​watering roasted meats P:
I’m glad I did my Unilocal homework beforehand and had an idea of the specialties I wanted to try, or else I would have been endlessly flipping back and forth among the glossy pages of the extensive menu. We decided on the famous amok, the 2^nd-​most-​famous satays, and a noodle dish because carbs P:
#1 SACH ANG, $ 2.50/stick (chicken kabobs marinated with lemongrass, galanga, kaffir, paprika, oyster sauce): The way the chicken is roasted to perfection and seasoned in what tasted like the epitome of the Spice Trail, almost puts to shame American BBQ’s with their burnt fatty meats and out-​of-​the-​bottle BBQ sauces. I seldom get very excited over satays because I dislike the struggles of ripping the meat off the sticks without making a fool of myself, but the sach ang was definitely worth the trouble (and potential embarrassment from accidentally flinging a piece of meat across the table).
#33 KUY TIEW CHA, $ 9 small (rice noodles stir fried with paprika, tamarind sauce, bean sprouts, topped with peanuts, choice of meat): I feared this would come out tasting like pad Thai on my Americanized Asian-​American palate, but it was distinctively and deliciously different – spicier, more savory, more exotic, more bold. I would recommend for any Thai food lovers, including and especially for those with the love-​hate relationship in which they are beginning to get sick of pad Thai.
#41 AMOK FISH, $ 10 (catfish mixed with coconut milk, collard greens, lemongrass, kaffir, galanga, and fish sauce, wrapped in banana leaf and steamed): At long last, the signature dish I’ve been eager to try despite the fact that I am neither a fan of catfish nor anything minced. And truthfully, the pictures of the yellow mush within a forest green leaf looked did not look the most appetizing. But the fluffy texture, the mild hint of coconut milk creaminess, the pungent spices, and the infused floral banana leaf flavor… in retrospect, unwrapping that banana leaf was like unwrapping a present.
The ambiance is a nice, family-​run style with lots of traditional décor and large paintings to make the dining experience feel even more like a trip to Southeast Asia. My only dissatisfaction is that the parking lot is shared with this sketchy bar, and you may run into sketchy-​looking motorcycle gangs.
Overall amazing food. I was quite thirsty afterwards though, and this happened with another Cambodian restaurant I went to – not sure if it’s the salt, spices, or *gasps of horror* MSG. In any case, the food was tasty and very unique. (Plus, they have lunch specials!!)