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Downtown Guelph's newest restaurant mixes Vietnamese, Thai and Cambodian cuisine

Taste With Andy, which opens Mar. 2, focuses on freshness and the method of cooking
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Andy Phoung stands in front of his restaurant, Taste with Andy. Anam Khan/GuelphToday

Downtown Guelph’s latest restaurant is mixing three cuisines with one focus: to serve a small variety of unique food, and excel at it. 

Located on 45 Cork St. E, Taste With Andy will serve Thai, Cambodian and Vietnamese cuisines. It opens Monday, March 2.

“It's been my passion for a long time,” says Guelph resident Andy Phoung who moved here from Cambodia 20 years ago and has dreamed of opening a restaurant for years.

Phoung, a one-man army at his own restaurant offers authentic Cambodian desserts with fresh fruit and sticky rice, Thai food with special sauces and Vietnamese food with authentic soups and noodles. 

He says while he has a set menu that serves appetizers such as spring rolls, skewers, street grill flavoured beef, salads with exotic fruits, and rice combo and noodle dishes, he aims to focus on a specific dish each day. 

“A lot of restaurants don’t really cook food,” says Phoung who finds that by juggling many dishes, restaurant owners lose focus on perfecting the taste, temperature and method of serving. 

"My food is completely different from other restaurants.”

Phoung says he aims to cook his dishes based on customer demand so he can always serve freshly cooked food.  

He says he goes by one motto which is “it’s not what you cook, its how you cook it.”

Phoung says he first learned how to cook from his mother, who taught him homemade Cambodian family recipes which were used for generations in his family. Subsequently, he dipped his toes in various roles that taught him how to run a restaurant over time. 

While working at Market Fresh a few years ago, he said he learned how to run a kitchen. While selling curries and salads at the farmer’s market, he learned how to interact with customers and while working at Sugo on Surrey, he developed his cooking skills further. He also began to cater his food creations on the side and practiced cooking his dishes until he perfected them, but his learning did not stop there. 

He says he continued to explore new recipes and methods of cooking at home and learned from YouTube cooking videos and his friends.  

“I learned from every direction,” says Phoung. 

He says his favourite dish in his restaurant is the chicken curry, a dish whose recipe was given to him by his mother consisting of potato, yam, chicken, coconut and a generous measure of lemongrass.

“My food is cooked from scratch and also my goal is not to sell food, it’s about letting you eat healthily,” says Phoung.

Taste with Andy is scheduled to open on March 2. The restaurant’s hours of operation are 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. from Monday to Friday and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m on Saturdays.


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Anam Khan

About the Author: Anam Khan

Anam Khan is a journalist who covers numerous beats in Guelph and Wellington County that include politics, crime, features, environment and social justice
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