TINI Cafe + Bar’s name is not a reference to its sizeโin fact, it was a surprise toย the owners to hear native English speakers comment to that effectย after opening their space this past September. โIt really is tiny,โ theyโd say. But TINI (pronounced tee-nee) was never intended to be small. In Khmer, Cambodiaโs native language, the wordย simply means “here.”
Sothea Thang and Daniel Mattes sat down with me at one of the two-floor cafeโs upstairs tables recently. Theyโre two of TINI’s four owners, and responsible for the majority of the day-to-day operations of the space (in addition to being its de facto visionaries). Their business partners mostly contribute to the financial side, while Thangย and Mattesย have the first and final say on menu and design.
Thangโs been working as a freelance architect in Phnom Penhย for years. After graduating from a local university, he started to renovate buildings, taking dilapidated apartments and houses and not so much remaking them as reacting to what they already were, then building them out to what he imagined they might be. His work on the structure of TINI, which hadย a long stint as an overpriced bamboo-themed bar before the pair found it, was informed by the pre-existing wood rafters and the light filtering through its opaque-with-grime floor-to-ceiling windows. When he saw it, something about the space just felt right. Hisย paintings and sculptures, which he creates in the time heโs not designing buildings or running a business, hang from the walls and peer out from pedestals.
โI follow the existing form of a building and then transform it from there,โ he says. โItโs important to work with the space, not on it. With TINI, I tried to lend it more openness, more light. It is something very simpleโrespecting what has already been here and working with that, new and old, is what I focused on.โ
Mattesย first came to Phnom Penh a few years ago as an intern withย an NGO; about a year after that initial seven-month stint ended, he was back in the city working with the group full-time. His organization monitors court proceedings in post-conflict societies, making sure trials like those conducted by the UN of former Khmer Rouge officials are held to international standards. At 25, the Stanford and London School of Economics graduate had never worked in coffee, let alone owned a business, before TINI. When I ask about the specific challenges of running a shop in Phnom Penh, he admits the first few months wereย a learning process,ย and pointsย primarily to a problem withย their business plan.
โItโs like, our goals are fundamentally incompatible with making money,โ he says. โWe want this to be a quiet space where people can meet with each other or read something. A thoughtful, detailed space.”
According to Mattes, the reigning cafesย ย in Phnom Penh are large places,ย where more seats than you couldย imagine filling up are nonetheless always full. The coffee takeaway business in the city is booming, too, with orders being filled in thin plastic cups that are then bagged in still more plastic (before being bagged in still more plastic) before being whisked into the street, where delivery guys hang them from their moto handlebars before driving off for delivery.
TINI is not like this. In fact, it isn’t really even a coffee shop.
โTINI is here to be used as a space for whatever people are interested in,” Mattes says. “I know some people see it as a cafe and bar, but thatโs not really my intention. Itโs to be used however people want to use it.โ
โI donโt know about coffee, drinks,โ Thangย echoes. โFor me, TINI is a place for artwork.โ
The actual building is set in the facade of an otherwise relatively residential side street roughly a block away from Phnom Penhโs open-air Russian Market,ย a few square blocks of stalls selling mostly knockoff name brands of clothing and knickknacks, named forย the community of Russian expats who lived in the area in the 1980s. Now as then, the neighborhood surrounding the Russian Market is known for being a kind of expat enclave, where rents are higher and manyย apartment buildings comeย replete with Western fixtures (like stoves and free-standing showers).
Accordingly, a host of restaurants, bars, and cafes catering primarily to expats have sprung up in the areaย over the past few years. But Mattesย insists TINI isnโt meant to be only for Westernersโand it isnโt. During my first visit, the entire first floor was occupied by a group of Snapchatting Cambodian kids, with large piles of textbooks featuring as prominently in their pictures as their cups of coffee and bowls of ice creamโa few flavors of which TINI offers everyday alongside an extensive menu of house-made cakes and cookies. The next time I was in, the script hadย flipped, and a vaguely European-looking couple was meeting over espressos.
As for the coffee, TINI gets its beans from nearbyย Feel Good Coffee, a roaster/cafe about a mile to the north. The espresso drinks are made with a 50-50 blend of Vietnamese and Lao coffees, roasted just past medium to suit Mattes’ taste for Italian-style drinks. They’re also trying out a few other roasters from around the region, includingย Rumblefish Specialty Roastersย in Kampot andย Akha Ama Coffeeย beans from Maejantai, roasted in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Still, there are certain things on TINIโs menu, like cocktails featuring Cambodian palm-sugar syrup (when the cafe transitions into a bar) or โCoffee Jelly,โ that I canโt imagine anywhere else. The latter is a gelatin made from coffee and sugar thatโs blended with ice and served with frothed milk and syrup, the resultย beingย sort of like an iced cappuccino gettingย mugged by a boba tea.
It’s not my drink of choice, andย seems aimed more toward the younger crowd, but thatโs okay. TINI wasnโt designed to beย the home of the Coffee Jelly, or aย place to haveย street food ordered into (though you can), or even necessarily a place to just grab a coffee. Itโs not any of those things specifically. Following on from Mattes’s intentions, and its name, itโs a welcoming place that is just here. And in a busy capital city, thatโs plenty.
Michael Light (@MichaelPLight)ย has written previously for Good Magazine and Wagโs Revue, and is an internย at Lucky Peach. Read more Michael Light onย Sprudge.
