A beautiful secret rooftop restaurant at the Feliz Urban Hotel. The drinks are plentiful, the food is meh, but the view is awesome.
It’s quite the paradox: you would never know it was here unless you… already knew it was here. Nestled in between nice suburban-looking homes, Amigo Restaurant and Sky Bar is a hidden gem in Phnom Penh shrouded to anyone who isn’t staying at the attached hotel, or who didn’t do heavy research beforehand.
How To Get Here
Amigo Restaurant & Sky Bar is located inside the Feliz Urban Hotel on the 15th floor. The concierge forgot to mention it, but use the elevator on the right side, as this is the only one that goes up to that floor.
Ambience & Amenities
Right off the elevator, there is an indoor dining room with a large wall of windows and something you probably desperately need: air conditioning. To get to the washroom, exit through the glass doors and go down one flight of stairs.
The sky bar is up a short flight of stairs, where there will be another two and a half levels of seating. With the exception of some squashy loungers, most of the tables and chairs are bar style, placing you well above the railing so you get an unobstructed view. The tables are not shaded with umbrellas, so if you’re coming here for lunch you’ll be baking if you want to dine al-fresco. There is another toilet up here at the sky bar, a single sitting toilet in its own room with all the comforts provided.
We chose to eat inside, as the view still looked incredible and we wanted to be comfortable with some AC. The place is decorated in a playful colour scheme while still being classy: modern charcoal placemats with pink napkins playing off of the lime green chairs, which match the fresh plant on the table. There were absolutely no other guests here, but it was getting quite late in the afternoon – around 3pm. We got a choice seat by the window, looking out at the independence monument and the river.
Menu
The menu is a good mix of mid-range Khmer and western food like Amoks and burgers, but also pricier rib eyes and seafood that are more befitting of a place like this. The drinks are where they went all out with a long list of cocktails, mocktails, and spirits. There are more things to drink than there are to eat! Those who don’t imbibe, there’s a much smaller selection of juices and coffee. The prices are higher here, but not to the point where it’s pompous. If you have American dollars in your bank account then it’s an absolute bargain no matter what you get and you can go wild.
Click on any menu picture to enlarge
Food
To cool off, I got their Paloma Mexico cocktail ($4.50). This tequila-based drink came margarita style, with salt and lime on the rim. It was certainly refreshing with a mix of flavours: sweet, salty and sour, but not strong. I didn’t have anything resembling a buzz when I finished it. Mark got a simple mixed non-dairy melon juice ($4) and an Americano ($2) to bring him out of the mid-afternoon slump. Some complementary nibbles came with our drinks too: long rods of cracker-like breadsticks.
Not wanting to spoil our dinner, we ordered simple food that we would share. The calamari ($4) plate was quite sad, and we couldn’t resist a snicker when it arrived. They really should’ve used a smaller plate for this. It’s like they realised too late that they only had a dozen tiny pieces of squid in the freezer but had to fill a twelve-inch plate nonetheless. The calamari, as you can see, are small and popper-sized. To fill the great white empty canvas that is the porcelain plate, it comes with a cabbage salad with peppers and avocado. The ramekin of dipping sauce was the best part. The menu claims that this is tartar sauce, but it definitely doesn’t taste like it. Tartar sauce is sweet with a tangy note from the pickles. This sauce was thick and ranch-like, much saltier than tartar and with a strong garlic and mystery herb flavour. There was way too much of it for the twelve pieces of calamari, so we also used it on the breadsticks and our other dish.
The club sandwich ($6) is smaller than I’m used to, but it’s fully packed with every ingredient that you’ve had in different variants of the club sandwich: bacon and ham and chicken and a fried egg, lettuce, tomato and raw onions. Is it just me or are the inclusion of raw onions weird? There is a smear of mayo already in the sandwich, but for our tastes, we both added more with the extra that came with the meal. What we didn’t use for dipping our fries in, we also used the leftover herby sauce from the calamari into our sandwiches which took it to a whole other level. The calamari is almost worth ordering for that sauce alone.
Service
Sometimes, fancy hotel restaurants like this can be snobbish to guests like us who are dressed like grubby backpackers and don’t order expensive food. We did not experience that at Amigo, and the waiters were always smiling and dutiful throughout our meal.
Saturday Worthy?
While I couldn’t stop admiring the cityscape during the meal, the food at Amigo Restaurant and Sky Bar was very average. Not terrible, not memorable, just edible. It’s expected at a place like this where everyone will remember the view, and the food is an afterthought. The drinks, on the other hand, are much better. This is the smarter way to enjoy this restaurant: come for quiet off-hour beers or cocktails at sunset.
Price for 2 pax (USD): $21.53
Club sandwich: $6
Calamari: $4
Paloma Mexico: $4.50
Mixed non-dairy juice: $4
Americano: $2
5% service tax: $1.03
Amigo Restaurant & Sky Bar
Feliz Urban Hotel 15th Floor, Street 288, #3 Bis, Boeung Keng Kang I Commune, Phnom Penh (near the Domino’s Pizza)
Daily: 6:30am – 11pm
Alcohol Served: Yes
