JEAN LUC OF LE TIGRE DE PAPIER RESTAURANT, COOKING SCHOOL & A FEW NEW RESTAURANTS HE ACQUIRED
 

Jean Luc was born in Corsica, an island in the Mediterranean Sea belonging to France and decided to move out of his native country to seek his fortune, just like that other person, who later became the Emperor of France: Napoleon Bonaparte.

In the course of his world travels, Luc "discovered" Southeast Asia and "fell in love" with Cambodia.

About 7 years ago, he decided to open a French restaurant at the present location on "Pub Street." At that time, there were only a few eateries in the neighborhood. 

In 2005, he started a cooking school for tourists who would like to learn how to make delicious Khmer dishes.

In terms of his restaurant business, his philosophy is that the prices of his food should be kept as low as possible by using not the best quality ingredients nor the lowest quality products; this is one of the reasons his business has  succeeded phenomenally; the restaurant is always full of customers, even in the low season.

To make sure his business will continue to expand, Jean Luc hired a European butcher who really knows how to choose good quality meat from local meat producers and then creates excellent ham and fillet steaks. We have tasted those new products several times and they are excellent indeed. In particular, the fillet steak (300g) with  blue cheese dressing is extraordinarily good and very reasonably priced at $7.50. This steak is much better than those at some of the other restaurants which serve similar dishes using imported beef for $10 to $18.00. The Tigre de Papier's steaks are totally different from what we have always experienced: namely that Cambodian beef is not tender. This is no longer true. Luc's new butcher is now creating excellent tasting beef and ham products.

Pizza lovers may want to know that Luc uses very high-quality cheeses and makes the best pizzas in town.

If you happen to like bacon and eggs for breakfast, Luc's special breakfast of two fried eggs, three rashers of bacon, a medium-size baquette, cheese, jam, and butter at the price of $1.75 is outrageously reasonable. He admits that he does not make any money (naturally), but breakfast customers do order coffee, beer, etc. and he believes that the most important thing is that the restaurant is busy even at 8 am.

There are some nice amenities at the restaurant. One is book exchange and the other free WiFi Internet connection, both of which seem to increase the traffic to this eatery.

When Luc wants to go out for dinner, he loves, above all, Abac, and then the Alliance Cafe, Cafe Indochine, and Tell.

Something wonderful happened a few years ago (2008). He fell in love with a Cambodian lady and married her. Now they have a baby girl, and he is convinced that he is going to live in Cambodia for the rest of his life. He is expected to work very hard in the future, as he estimates that the total number of overseas visitors to Siem Reap will hit the 5 million mark in the year 2015!

Here is a list of what restaurants he owns:

Le Tigre de Papier and Bengal Tiger, both on Pub Street;

Bamboo Restaurant and Samsara Indian Restaurant, both on Pub Street Alley.

All in all, we think that Siem Reap is very fortunate to have such an enterprising man as Jean Luc.