Mawn makes the New York Times’ best restaurant dishes list

Once again, Mawn has garnered national attention, months after chef-owner Phila Lorn earned the James Beard Foundation’s Emerging Chef award and Food & Wine’s Best New Chef designation.

This time, a single dish is in the spotlight. The New York Times named the Southeast Asian BYOB noodle house’s banh chow salad on its annual list of Best Restaurant Dishes We Ate Across the U.S.

It’s a dish that Craig LaBan also praised in his 2023 review of Mawn: “You can taste the pride in those memories in dishes like the banh chow salad, savory coconut milk-turmeric crepes, not unlike crispy Vietnamese banh xeo, but cradled wet in a bowl already dressed with fish sauce beneath a flavorful pile of herbs, sprouts, chicken, and shrimp.”

NYT food reporter Brett Anderson extolled the salad’s savory coconut rice crepe for being “as lacily crisp as a Parmesan tuile on the outside, and plumped by ground chicken and shrimp within.”

He also notes that the “tangle of soft lettuces and what the menu calls ‘backyard herbs’ bring a lot to the plate: levity, structure and the thrown-together appearance of everyday Cambodian American home cooking, only with a chef’s attention to details.”

The praise also comes on the heels of LaBan’s review of Phila and Rachel Lorn’s sophomore restaurant, Sao, which feels as deeply personal as Mawn, he writes, but focuses on seafood instead of noodle dishes.

Mawn’s banh chow salad is the only Philadelphia dish on the national list, sharing a place with other picks from around the country, like a chaas aguachile from Mirra in Chicago, an ode to Ben’s Chili Bowl from Kwame Onwuachi’s Dogon in Washington, D.C., and a lamb neck pie from Little Beast in Seattle.