How every café on this site is scored

The visit

No café is told in advance. Nobody introduces themselves, nobody asks for a table, nobody mentions this site. The coffee is ordered like any other customer would order it, and it is paid for at the counter like any other customer would pay for it.

That matters more than it sounds. A café that knows it is being reviewed makes a better cup, and the cup you would have been served is the one worth measuring.

The visit lasts as long as it takes to drink one americano and look around. Usually twenty minutes to half an hour.

Always the same drink

Every visit orders an americano — espresso and hot water, nothing else.

The reason is comparison. A flat white in one café and a pour-over in another cannot be ranked against each other; too much changes between them. The same drink, ordered the same way, produces numbers that can sit in the same column.

An americano is also the least forgiving thing on most menus. Milk covers a great deal — a rushed extraction, a stale grind, a roast pushed too far. Water covers nothing.

The five criteria

One hundred points, split five ways.

The americano — 50 points. Half the score sits in the cup, and it breaks down into five parts of ten: balance and bitterness, body and dilution, aroma and sweetness, aftertaste, and serving temperature. Each one is scored separately and argued in writing on the scorecard.

Price — 15 points. Scored against what is in the cup, not against the cheapest cup in town. An americano at $1.25 that tastes burnt loses more than one at $3.50 that does not.

Seating comfort — 15 points. Whether the chair holds up after thirty minutes, whether there is somewhere to put a cup and a bag, whether the table wobbles.

Atmosphere — 15 points. Noise, light, temperature, how the room feels to sit in. The most subjective of the five, and the one where the written verdict matters most.

Service — 5 points. Correct and unhurried, or not. Deliberately the smallest share: a friendly welcome does not make a good coffee.

What the scores mean

80 and above. The coffee is good, and the room does not undo it. Worth crossing town for.

60 to 79. Something works and something does not. The scorecard says which.

Below 60. Not worth the walk, and the written verdict explains why.

No café has ever been given a round number to make a point. If a place lands on 67, it landed on 67.

What this does not measure

Plenty, and it is worth being clear about it.

Origin of the beans. Visits are anonymous, which means nobody can be asked where the coffee comes from. A café that advertises single-origin Mondulkiri may well be telling the truth — this site cannot verify it, so it does not score it.

Ethics and sourcing. Several cafés in Cambodia are social enterprises, training cafés or employee-owned businesses. That is public information and it is worth knowing. It earns no points here, because it cannot be checked from a table.

Everything except the americano. The pastries may be excellent, the flat white may be better, the smoothies may be the reason everyone else is there. None of it is scored.

Consistency. Each score reflects one visit, on one day, at one hour. A café can have a bad morning. That is what the annual revisit is for.

The annual revisit

Every café is visited again once a year. Prices are checked, opening hours are checked, and the coffee is scored again from scratch.

Scores change. When they do, the page shows the new number and the date it was measured. The old score is not hidden — a café that improved deserves to have it visible, and so does one that slipped.

Almost nobody else does this. Most coffee lists covering Cambodia were written between 2014 and 2017 and have never been checked since; several still recommend cafés that closed years ago.

Nothing here is for sale

No café pays to appear on this site. No café pays to rank higher. No café is told its score before it is published, and none is offered the chance to comment first.

There is no advertising, no affiliate link, and no sponsored placement. Every coffee tasted for this site was paid for out of pocket.

The annual award, Americano One, follows the same rule: it is sent to the three highest-scoring cafés of the year in each city, free and unsolicited, and it cannot be bought.

When something is wrong

Scores are opinions, formed by applying a public scale. Facts are not.

If a price, an address, an opening time or any other factual detail on this site is wrong, it will be corrected. Cafés and readers can both signal it through the contact page.

Opinions stand. A café that disagrees with its score is welcome to say so, and the scorecard will keep saying what was measured and why.