Peter Yallouros | Greek Souvlaki Restaurant | Phnom Penh | Cambodia

Peter Yallouros | Greek Souvlaki Restaurant | Phnom Penh | Cambodia

Greek Souvlaki Restaurant is a family business with Sarah and Peter from Cambodia and Greece, supported by their two little girls, Apsara and Chantrea. It is run in a typically Greek chaotic way but with the emphasis on good, clean, healthy food made freshly, daily on the premises which is creating quite a buzz in Toul Tompoung and Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I am Peter Yallouros, 61 years old, twice married (Greek and Khmer) and I describe myself as a London/Greek. I was born in London to Greek Cypriot parents. I grew up with typical British values and ideals and discovered my Greekness after I got to married to Anastasia from Athens, Greece. The result of this union, which lasted 23 years, was two excellent and wonderful young boys who are now 36 and 34 and living in Athens and Nicosia respectively. In my 40’s I was diagnosed with angina and I was ready to give up.

However my Greek spirit went into overdrive and helped me fight life again. I bought properties and made money on the stock market. Finally the crash came of 2008 and I was devastated. I has enough of the West and I was ready to give up again. I travelled to Asia. First in Malaysia and then in Thailand. Cambodia was never in my thoughts.

What brings you in Phnom Penh, Cambodia ?

In 2010 I discovered Cambodia. The first thing I did was google to find a Greek restaurant. I also met my future wife, Sarah, and the second lucky union of my life began. This has resulted in two beautiful young girls, age 6 and 4, named Apsara and Chantrea respectively. I started to teach English as a foreign language to support my family while Sarah started a higher education course at CamEd as an ACCA student, while at the same time bringing up the girls. While in London I always wanted a coffee shop so when the opportunity arose in 2015 we bought and started ApCha Cafe, names from a combination of the two girl’s names.

The business wasn’t going very well due to location, although I was eating a fine English breakfast and enjoying a great Italian illy coffee. Faced with the decision to close it down or change, we decided to change to Greek cuisine. Business started to pick up as we started to make and serve 15 of Greece’s most popular dishes. Business was going so well that we decided to move to a better area for expat traffic and moved to Russian market area where we are today. We try here to serve authentic Greek food in an authentic Greek atmosphere where .org used chaos is the prevailing factor. We get to know most of our customers personally and we love cooking while attending to our children in true Greek fashion. Family is the most important thing for us. We are all together here in this venture.

Tell us about Greek Souvlaki Restaurant in Phnom Penh, the Greek Cuisine … etc.

I believe Greek cuisine is well known to European and westerns in General, however it is unknown to locals in Cambodia. So our mission was and is to introduce it to the Khmer people. The Khmers are a long suffering people who lived through a very unfortunate human experiment in the 70’s and have started again from a zero base.

This unheard of predicament has produced a mostly young population. I think half the population is below 30, so it is encouraging to see the young starting off their lives with dreams and expectation as we ourselves did. The climate here is hot and humid all year round which is endearing to us who dislike the cold.

What do you miss from Greece, Cyprus and London ?

From Greece I miss the clear sea, the wondering historical sites, the laid back lifestyle, the food and my son. From Cyprus I miss my childhood years, the warm hearted people, the food, the United island, the sea, the weather and I miss my other son too. From London I miss the theater, international cuisine, organization and management, true strong clear loyal people.

You can find in tripadvisor (233 from 1,098 restaurants in Phnom Penh the time that we post this article).