On the outskirts of Siem Reap, down a rutted red dirt road flanked by modest farmhouses and market gardens, trailblazing restaurant Lum Orng, housed in a traditional wooden house, is serving up some of Cambodia’s most innovative dining.

It’s the work of chef Seng Sothea, who has made it his mission to highlight the food of his homeland, which he says is mostly unfamiliar to the rest of the world. “Cambodia is a very small country with a traumatic recent past,” he says in reference to the brutal Khmer Rouge period of the 1970s. “Not many Cambodians have migrated elsewhere, so our culinary traditions haven’t crossed borders, like those from Vietnam and Thailand.”