The Little Red Fox Espresso Cafe

Cold drip, Southeast Asian beans, and a salon upstairs

The coffee is why the place is remembered and the haircut is why it gets described. The Little Red Fox opened in late 2014 in Kandal Village, in central Siem Reap, built by two Australians who spent most of that year researching, sourcing and designing it, wanting the parts of Australian cafe life they missed. What came out of it is unusually technical for the neighbourhood: five brewing methods and three beans and blends, worked around high-quality Southeast Asian coffee. It was the first place in Siem Reap to pour cold drip, and the apparatus that does it is still part of the furniture. One origin gives the sourcing its clearest shape, Mystic Mountain, a single origin from the Bolaven Plateau in Laos with apricot, citrus and toffee, which was the house favourite until late 2022, when the grower stopped under the weight of export costs.

Two storeys, coffee below

Downstairs is a coffee bar; upstairs is a hair salon, and the split is deliberate rather than a curiosity. One founder came from professional hairdressing and the other from hospitality, so the building carries both trades at once. The tone follows from that: playful, socially minded, more neighbourhood than tourist strip even in a district built for visitors. It works as a daytime stop with room to sit for a while over a laptop, and the crowd mixes residents and travellers without much ceremony. Kandal Village around it is the design-conscious part of town, which suits a cafe that pays attention to how things look as well as how they taste.

Start with the Ginger and Lemongrass Latte

Order the Ginger and Lemongrass Latte first. It is the drink most people remember the cafe by, closer to morning medicine than to a flavoured coffee, and it sets up the rest of the list. Beside it sit the coloured lattes, Pink Beetroot, Blue Butterfly Flower and Yellow Turmeric, which look like novelties but are built on the same specialty espresso as everything else. If the point of the visit is the coffee itself, take the cold drip and let it stand alone. Food is straightforward and pitched at the morning: a Western breakfast of scrambled eggs and bread does its job beside the coffee, and the kitchen claims nothing beyond that. The honest order here is coffee-led, with breakfast as support.