emart24 is a Korean convenience store chain, and it has been opening branches across Phnom Penh over the last few years. Calling it a convenience store undersells it a little. It is a small Korean supermarket, a cosmetics counter and a street food stall stacked into one bright yellow building, and it never closes. There is a hot food counter with tteokbokki and odeng, a wall of instant ramyun with hot water machines so you can cook and eat on the spot, a coffee and bakery section, and shelves of Korean skincare and snacks that you would normally have to hunt for.
There are branches all over the city, but the one this site is about is the Penghouth branch, because that is the one near my house and the one I have genuinely spent hours in.
When the assignment said to pick a local business I actually like, I did not have to think about it. I checked my week and realised I had eaten there four times in seven days. I was not choosing a business for a school project; I was just writing about where I already go.
It also felt honest. I could have picked somewhere fancier and written nicer sounding sentences about it, but I would have been making things up. I know this store. I know which bowl is worth the extra $1.50, I know what the place sounds like at eleven at night, and I know the staff do not sigh at you when you come in for the third time in a week.
The rose tteokbokki is the honest answer. They make two versions, original and rose, and I have never once ordered the original. The rose sauce is creamy and sweet at the front, then a small amount of heat arrives at the end, and there is a third thing in there I have never been able to name. It is not a big spicy dish that hurts; it is the kind you keep eating past the point where you meant to stop. Big size is around $3, small around $1.50, and it comes with a soft-boiled egg and fish cake.
But if the food were the only thing, I would order delivery. What actually keeps me going in person is that the store is comfortable. Prices start around $0.50, so an ordinary evening there does not become a decision. The staff have been friendly every single time, at every hour I have shown up. And because it is open 24 hours, it is one of the few places in the neighbourhood where being there at a strange hour is completely normal.
It is the only convenience store I would describe as a place to go rather than a place to buy something.
Honestly, everyone, and I mean that in a specific way rather than a lazy way. Every time I am inside there is a mix of people: students with laptops open at the counter, people eating alone after a shift, foreigners looking at the Korean shelves, families. Nobody looks out of place and nobody is watching the clock on you.
So it works for a student who wants somewhere cheap to sit, for someone who finishes work at midnight and does not want to eat alone in a silent room, for anyone curious about Korean food who does not want to commit to a full restaurant, and for anyone who just wants a warm bowl of something for three dollars.
The food photos and the aisle photo on this site are mine, taken on my own visits. The storefront, the DIY ramyun wall and the wide store interior come from the official emart24 Cambodia Facebook page and are credited under each image and in the footer of every page.
