Trendy Rooftop Restaurants and Bars in Phnom Penh

• Me Wathana
• 30 December 2020
• Local News
• 2763 Views

By Eric Wong Chon Lap and Ho Ying Ying

The first rooftop bar opened on top of a high-rise building was the Eclipse Sky Bar, located on the 23rd floor of Phnom Penh Tower, which was also one of the first high-rise buildings completed in Phnom Penh in the earlier years. As the years go by, the rapidly growing city of Phnom Penh is now home to a slew of amazing rooftop restaurants and bars.

Rooftop restaurants and bars are great places to sit, chat with friends and eat and drink whilst watching the ever-changing Phnom Penh skyline. It is also a nice getaway from the hustle and bustle of the city, and of course, most of these venues provide music and entertainment.

Office building / hotel owners and operators are getting more creative, and evolved in some intriguing new directions by setting up rooftop restaurants and bars. However, not every building’s rooftop is qualified to setup a restaurant or bar – it is all about the interior and exterior environments. For a rooftop bar to be successful, there must be the right aesthetics, lighting and people. It is just like any aspects of the bar business – both the indoor and outdoor ambiences are critical for the success of the business.

A common mistake is to simply open a restaurant or bar on a roof and assume it will become a success. It has to be designed and run well, together with the vibe, personality, and with a memorable and defining sense of this place.

There are an awful lot of rooftop restaurants and bars to choose from in Phnom Penh, but only a few offers a magnificent landscape, together with an outdoor terrace with a comfortable sofa area for visitors. Bangkok for example has some of the world’s best rooftop restaurants and bars, including Distil Bar, located on the 64th floor of Lebua Bangkok or the Red Sky at Centara Grand at CentralWorld. These venues offer a striking view, together with a great cosmopolitan view of the city while serving some of the finest champagne, cocktails, wines etc. or other non-alcoholic beverages in the bar area. In Phnom Penh, offering a riverside and unblocked building views (preferably above 30 floors) for a rooftop restaurant and bar, while being on top of the latter with a 360-degree panorama view are necessary in order to stand out from the crowd.

The concept of rooftop venues can only tailor to specific buildings and locations. However, despite there being many rooftop restaurants and bars in Phnom Penh, not all of them offer stunning views, and some of these are let down by substandard drinks. For the owners of rooftop venues, it is also important for them to work with a restaurant or bar designer who specialises in rooftop concepts. Any competent architect or designer can design an attractive space, but one who specialises in rooftop concepts will be more likely to create something unique. In the end, rooftop restaurants and bars are the symbols that a modern society has been built – it is also a matter of pride for the city itself.

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Eric Wong has extensive experiences in the field of property consulting and development sectors, primarily within the emerging markets of Southeast Asia. His previous role involved with assisting in the development of project budgets to ensure the operations are within cost restraints, developing and executing projects for the assigned market areas etc. From the property consulting prospective, he has lead market research assignments inclusive of providing descriptive, exploratory market research and analysis reports within the office, residential, hotel and retail segments in both quantitative and qualitative methods to determine suitable development types, scale and product mix, and address property-related matters from project positioning to absorption rates, phasing and pricing and marketing strategies etc.

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