Joannès Rivière facts for kids

Joannès "Jo" Rivière is a French chef, a person who owns and runs restaurants, and a cookbook author. He is well-known for his amazing skills in making Cambodian cuisine. Many people think he is the best Western expert on Cambodian food.

Joannès Rivière's Story

Rivière was born and grew up in Roanne, France. He remembers his family's Christmas dinners. They often had a mix of French and Southeast Asian dishes. His uncle, who worked in Cambodia in the 1970s, introduced some of these dishes, like larp. Joannès learned to cook by working in his family's restaurant. After finishing culinary school in France, he worked as a pastry chef in the United States for two years. He worked in Nantucket and Philadelphia.

Instead of joining the military, Rivière chose to do volunteer work. In August 2003, he moved to Cambodia. There, he volunteered as a cooking teacher and restaurant manager. He worked at the non-profit Sala Baï Hotel and Restaurant School in Siem Reap. To help the school raise money, he wrote a Cambodian cookbook. It was called La cuisine du Cambodge avec les aprentis de Sala Bai. The book was published in 2005 and sold more than 8,000 copies in France. Joannès said that at first, he wasn't very impressed by Cambodian cuisine. But he became very interested in it while working on the book.

Cambodian food has changed my cooking style in many ways. The idea of mixing meat and fish, the idea of over or under cooking something on purpose, or even the idea of doing an entire meal without dairy, has changed my way of running a kitchen.

—Joannès Rivière

In 2005, he started working as a top chef at the Meric restaurant in the Hotel de la Paix. In 2008, an English version of his Cambodian cookbook was released. It was called "Cambodian Cooking: A humanitarian project in collaboration with Act for Cambodia". In 2010, Rivière was planning to go back to France. But then he met David Thompson, another famous chef. Thompson had eaten at the hotel where Rivière was working. He was very impressed by how Rivière used local ingredients that were not well-known. Thompson encouraged Rivière to stay in Cambodia and open his own restaurant.

Cuisine Wat Damnak Restaurant

In 2011, Joannès Rivière and his partner Carole Salmon opened a restaurant called Cuisine Wat Damnak. The restaurant got its name from the nearby Wat Damnak pagoda. It serves Cambodian food, focusing on dishes that are not as well-known. The restaurant changes its menu every two weeks. This way, they can use fresh ingredients that are available locally at that time.

In 2015, Cuisine Wat Damnak was named one of Asia's 50 Best Restaurants. It was the first Cambodian restaurant ever to make this important list. In 2016, the restaurant moved up to the 43rd position on the list.

In 2018, Rivière became business partners with Nguon Vengchhay, a Cambodian expert in hospitality. In March 2021, they opened another Cuisine Wat Damnak restaurant. This new one is in Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. The restaurant in Siem Reap had to close for a while because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But it reopened on October 1, 2022. In 2022, both Cuisine Wat Damnak restaurants were recognized again. They were ranked No. 2 in the "Best Restaurants in Cambodia" category by the online travel magazine Travel + Leisure. This was part of their "Asia’s Best Awards 2022 – Best Of Cambodia".

Books by Joannès Rivière

• Joannès Rivière, Dominique De Bourgknecht, David Lallemand (2005). La Cuisine du Cambodge avec les apprentis de Sala Baï. Philippe Picquier Publishing ISBN: 978-2-877-30816-8
• Joannès Rivière, Dominique De Bourgknecht, David Lallemand (2008). Cambodian Cooking: A humanitarian project in collaboration with Act for Cambodia. Periplus Editions. ISBN: 978-0-794-65039-1.