The Chef
Hak Serey
by Chef Hak Serey
Chef Hak Serey signs every plate at Mekhala. His cooking is a love letter to Cambodian produce, written in a contemporary hand.
Raised among the markets and family kitchens of Cambodia, Hak Serey learned flavour before technique: the sour-sweet of sugar palm, the lift of kaffir lime, the smoke of grilled river fish, the slow heat of a yellow kroeung. That memory is the backbone of everything served at Mekhala.
Trained in the disciplines of fine dining, he plates those flavours with restraint and intent: duck breast on a saraman reduction, sea bass tartare under avocado and passion fruit, a tasting menu that closes on matcha and green tea. Nothing folkloric, nothing diluted: Khmer cooking, taken seriously.
His signature runs across the whole carte. Look for the dishes marked as the chef's, and for the tasting menu that lets him tell the full story in seven courses.
“I cook the Cambodia I grew up tasting, and I plate it for the world.”
Hak Serey