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Cheng Heng is a wonderful restaurant — a St. Paul institution, the best (to our knowledge) Cambodian restaurant in the state, a place where you will be dazzled with heat, funk, depth of flavor, and unctuous richness.

Cheng Heng is as inexpensive as your standard Vietnamese or Thai formula menu — but while this Cambodian eatery offers some pretty solid variants of some of the same dishes (after all, food trends rarely correlate directly with national borders), it offers a few dishes that you've quite likely never tried before.

The menu is filled with noodle and rice dishes, substantial soups, coconut-milk curries, and multi-ingredient stir-fries. And, best of all, the food is refreshing and fresh. Like its neighbors Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, and Vietnam, Cambodian cuisine combines cooked with raw, sweet with sour, spicy with bland, and hot with cold, for some interesting dining flavors and textures. Lighter than Vietnamese and more mellow than Thai, the Cambodian food at Cheng Heng seems to appeal to a wide variety of diners. On a recent Friday lunch there were families with children, couples, singles, workers from a nearby business, retirees, and students of a wide variety of nationalities.

University Avenue is full of Asian restaurants, especially along the stretch that's known as Little Mekong, from Mackubin to Galtier streets. I have lots of favorites along that stretch, but the special, warm feeling I get from eating at Cheng Heng, the Cambodian restaurant on University Avenue in St. Paul goes beyond the spiciness of some of the cuisine. Maybe it's the friendliness with which customers are greeted. Or maybe it's knowing that the owners, Kunrath and Kevin Lam, have donated some of the earnings from their restaurant to build schools back in Cambodia. But mainly it's the cuisine. Although there are many resemblances to Vietnamese and especially Thai cuisine, there are also enough differences to make for a refreshing change of pace.

If you’re interested in trying Cambodian cooking, Cheng Heng is your only option in the Twin Cities. This is just the sort of restaurant we love: delicious, authentic ethnic food, costing next to nothing, and served by new immigrants in a family restaurant.

A melting pot of global influences in Saint Paul, Cheng Heng Restaurant serves a blend of Asian cuisines. Healthy food is in, as it should be, so come here for a tasty, low-fat and gluten-free bite. Load up the mini-van and bring the kids to this restaurant — they'll love the menu and scene here as much as mom and dad.