Every week, Lay Yi climbs into her family’s Honda CRV and heads off for Boston. There, she’ll pick up Southeast Asian herbs and spices, and maybe more important than anything else, a supply of banh mi rolls. Eight hundred of them.

It’s impossible to find the right kind of bread around here for the Cambodian sandwiches that give Phnom Penh Sandwich Station its name—chicken, beef, shrimp, pork, or tofu with shredded vegetables and a generous spread of the tangy, flavor-bomb of a sauce that ties everything together. “As a sandwich shop, we have to have that kind of bread,” says Yi’s husband, Sarin Tin. “So we drive to Boston every single week. It’s lighter and fluffier, crispier on the outside and softer on the inside. The bread around here, they have more dough, it’s not as light.”

Sarin Tin at the White River Junction location

Sarin Tin at the White River Junction location

The rolls wind up at the restaurant’s two locations: the original takeout spot on the edge of downtown Lebanon and the sit-down WRJ spot Phnom Penh occupies in what used to be the Polka Dot diner. Both are descended from stalls that Tin and Lay Yi ran at the Hanover and Newport farmers markets serving up spring rolls, curry, and rice—Tin would work the night shift at Hypertherm, then do food during the day. They were able to expand the menu a bit to include stir-fry noodles and dumplings when they moved into a food truck they parked in Lebanon for lunch and Hanover for dinner for several summers. And then, in 2016, they saw an ad for a spot in the little triangle where High and Mascoma streets come together in Lebanon; they shut down the food truck and opened for takeout a week later. The Polka Dot spot came two years later.

At some point—though no one is quite sure when, since it was originally slated for 2020—the City of Lebanon will build a roundabout that will require tearing that building down. “So we need a backup,” Tin says. “We love the [WRJ] location: It’s small enough for us to handle.” That’s because the couple’s goals aren’t grand: “We never had experience running a restaurant,” Sarin says. “It’s just home-cooked. That’s all we know. Food brings family and friends together.”

There’s still a bit of the Polka Dot left in White River. Phnom Penh employee Wannipha Camber is in the background.

There’s still a bit of the Polka Dot left in White River. Phnom Penh employee Wannipha Camber is in the background.

The menu, with its Thai, Vietnamese, and Cambodian influences, runs from sandwiches to curries to noodles and soups. It’s expansive in its regional breadth but, as Sarin says, “still small enough for us to handle it.”

Tin did, actually, have restaurant experience before he and Yi opened Phnom Penh: For the first seven years after he moved to Lebanon following college to join his father—”I wished then that he’d settled in a warmer state, but it’s all good. I love it here so much now,” he says—he bounced through a series of jobs, including stints at McDonald’s and Peking Tokyo (as well as the Hotel Coolidge and Kleen Laundry), before winding up at Hypertherm for a decade—and then deciding he needed to do something different. Now, the two restaurants are part and parcel of the Upper Valley dining scene.

And he has no question at all about what he’d order for lunch: the Mi Kary. “It’s a rich broth, red-curry based, but it has Singapore laksa in it,” he says. (Laksa is a spicy, coconut-milk based noodle soup.) “So it has egg noodles, shrimp, tofu, green beans, potatoes, other veggies, along with Thai chili, jalapeños, black pepper, and other spices.” The dish has only been available at the WRJ restaurant, Tin says, but he’s planning to add it to the Lebanon location, as well. “It wasn’t even originally on the menu, but when my wife and I came here to eat we’d always make it up for ourselves, so we decided, why not put something we like on the menu? And as it gets colder outside, it’s really good.”

On the left, Phnom Penh’s Mi Kary. On the right, Vietnamese noodles.

On the left, Phnom Penh’s Mi Kary. On the right, Vietnamese noodles.