Sao brings Mawn’s ‘no rules’ energy to the oyster bar, with intriguing and delicious results
The second restaurant from the couple behind Mawn is just as tiny, but with fun cocktails, vibrant Southeast Asian crudos and a nostalgia for South Philly that infuses the food and intimate space.
Philadelpians can’t get enough of Rachel and Phila Lorn. At Sao, their sultry new oyster bar on East Passyunk Avenue, diners pull up at the counter for warm corn cakes soaked in honey and bejeweled with roe, oysters splashed with Cambodian peppercorn fish sauce mignonette, and barrel-aged “Jabroni Negroni” cocktails tinged with Islay whisky smoke to wash them down.
You’ll find the same high-voltage “no rules” pan-Asian cooking here that propelled this married couple’s first restaurant, Mawn, to an incredible string of local and national accolades (including a spot on the Inquirer’s Top 10 list, a new edition of The 76, a “Best New Chefs” award for Phila from Food & Wine, and a similar nod from the James Beard Foundation). Considering the constant reservation traffic jam of wannabe diners angling to nab one of Mawn’s 28 seats, why open a second restaurant with room for just 33? Surely, this couple could fill a much larger space.
“Rachel and I have enough, we don’t need more,” says Phila, 39. “I still have that old-school mentality that we protect our family and we funnel our lives through this (little) store of ours. I never wanted to be a rock star or be recognized at Target. We just opened restaurants because that’s what we know how to do.”
The fact they do it so well is a blessing and a curse. At Sao, the monthly scrum for tables offers the same exercise in reservation-app frustration as Mawn, and the long line for the 30-or-so walk-ins that find their way into Sao over the course of an evening understandably vexes the gift shop next door, whose manager emerged to politely redirect us from blocking her storefront on this lively stretch of Passyunk Avenue.
Once inside, however, the virtues of Sao’s intimate setting are clear, as diners lean into their crudos and cocktails at candlelit banquette tables along a white-washed brick wall hung with mirrors and stained-glass panes. Another 10 guests — in my opinion, the lucky ones — perch in the red neon glow of the bar counter, where the action unfolds on multiple stages.
To my right, bartender Steph Liebetreu manages to simultaneously rattle a cocktail shaker in her left hand and stir a crystal decanter of martinis with her right, all while dancing in perfect syncopation to Sao’s soulful soundtrack mix of vintage R&B, Cambodian rap, and Frank Sinatra. To my left, shucker Davina Soondrum (also a talented pastry chef) festoons our icy oyster plateau clockwise from “lemon wedge o’clock” with plump Japanese Kumamotos, tiny-briny BeauSoleils from Canada and Jersey’s finest, Sweet Amalias. Each one is oceanic perfection on their own, but they become electric when splashed with that Cambodian mignonette, or a spicy-tart jolt of Lao sauce sparked with lime and crushed cilantro stems. Amidst Philly’s current boom in new oyster bars, those vivid sauces are part of what make Sao unique.
Front and center, meanwhile, there’s chef Phila himself butchering a whole dry-aged hamachi mid-service to serve raw with fish sauce, coconut milk, and vinegared onions — a salute to the beloved nearby soup hall, Pho 75. He’s slicing thick pink tiles of bluefin tuna and stacking them like a deck of sashimi cards doused with soy sauce and lime beneath fistfuls of roasted green chilies and crushed marcona almonds.
As I waver on which crudo to order next (perhaps the spot prawns with brown butter and prawn-head oil?), he pours sweet and spicy orange chili jam over an ivory mound of raw scallops, apples, and pepita seeds and I have my answer: “That’s Phila’s favorite,” confides Rachel as she patrols the narrow dining room, ever-playing Tetris with seats to accommodate more walk-ins.
That scallop-and-chili jam combo will be familiar to anyone who’s dined at Mawn, where Lorn workshopped many of these dishes for months. There are other overlaps here of Mawn’s greatest hits, like the crispy soft-shell shrimp in fish sauce caramel, or the awesome 20-ounce ribeye piled high with “Cambodian chimichurri,” boosted with lime juice and fermented prahok fish paste.
One standard you must order, though, is the intricate papaya salad, a colorful crunch-fest of long beans, peanuts, candied shrimp, and shredded green papaya lashed with blasts of sour tamarind, chili, and shrimp paste. It dials your taste buds up to a certain base level of funk and sour heat before moving the conversation to more contemporary flights of fusion fancy.
Sao’s menu is more an extension of Mawn’s repertoire, rather than something entirely new, with a greater emphasis on raw seafood and an even more playful approach to cooked dishes rooted in tributes to favorite restaurants. Perhaps the most memorable dish at Sao, in fact, is a direct corn cake homage to Boston’s Neptune Oyster bar, whose signature johnnycake is remade here as a warm, honey butter-soaked hoe cake enriched with dashi then topped with cool smoked trout salad and beads of roe, which Phila tends to piles onto Sao’s plates by the spoonful. The lacy crunch of that warm sweet cake against the savory pop of roe, amped by the saline burst of a supplemental scoop of caviar, was one of my favorite bites of the year.
Sao’s menu is full of Easter eggs for the keen-eyed diner, including an irresistible tuna carpaccio topped with fried shallots, cured chili rings, and a sizzling finish of sesame oil that’s an ode to the “bronzizzle” roll at Zama, where Phila spent some formative years. There’s also a nod to the beloved late-night cutlet from Palizzi Social Club that’s transformed with Southeast Asian pickled cucumbers, Thai basil, and fish sauce caramel. The chef, who grew up just a few blocks from East Passyunk, also pays tribute to South Philly’s Italian “crab gravy” tradition with his own take, a blend of red and green coconut milk curries steeped with crab shells that comes topped with crisply fried scallops.
A frequent chicken skewer special, whose meat is marinated in kreung spice paste, is grilled over binchotan coals as Phila’s nod to the weekend Khmer barbecues at the Southeast Asian Market. The mee caton is a straightforward stir-fry of velvety soft beef, Chinese broccoli, and fat rice noodles kissed with sesame oil that’s a throwback to one of the best home dishes made by his mother, Sim Khim. (I also loved the seafood rendition.)
Nostalgia for family and neighborhood pervades every corner of Sao, from the vintage bathroom door with textured glass and wavy panes that replicates the vestibules of many South Philly rowhomes (including the Lorns’ house), family pictures, and an antique cash register from the Atlantic City boardwalk hotel once owned by Rachel’s grandparents.
Even the restaurant’s name channels a sense of place: It’s a phonetic representation of how Phila’s mother, a Cambodian refugee, pronounces the “South” in South Philly. Her son, famously, is also named for the family’s adopted city, although Khim and everyone else pronounce it “Pee-la.” The sign hanging out front — Sao Phila — has multiple meanings.
With the added element of a liquor license at Sao, the Lorns’ business partner and close family friend, Jesse Levinson, designed an opening drink list that follows on theme. The chicory-scented, coconut-creamed Vietnamese coffee martini, Wing Phat Plaza, is named for the bustling Asian strip mall on Washington Avenue nearby. The Angkor Baby borrows a Michelada from South Philly’s lively Mexican scene, then adds the Asian touches of ground Kampot peppercorns and a rice vinegar tang.
Levinson says the drink menu will keep evolving as Liebetreu and her fellow bartender, Lillian Chang, begin to take creative control, supplementing the small but trendy selection of natural wines. I also expect Sao’s sake selection to take a big leap once general manager Kelly Brophy, formerly the lead omakase server at Royal Sushi, begins to share her expertise.
Indeed, so much is still evolving here, including the tasty but limited dessert selection of crème brûlée and whoopie pies from Soondrum (when she’s not shucking shellfish), that I’m certain we’ve only seen the beginning of what Sao can truly become.
“We’re locked and loaded for more because we have room to grow,” says Phila, referring mostly to desserts. If only they also had room to grow more seats! Philadelphia’s diners, no doubt, would quickly snap those up, too.
Sao
1710 E. Passyunk Ave., saophilly.com; no phone, but staff responds to messages on Instagram or OpenTable.
Open Wednesday through Saturday, 5 to 10 p.m.
Reservations are highly suggested, but a handful of walk-in seats are available.
Not wheelchair-accessible. There is a step up into the restaurant, as well as at the bathroom.
About 90% of the menu is naturally gluten-free, while certain dishes that typically use the fryer (like the scallops in crab gravy) can be modified to avoid cross-contamination.
Menu highlights: Crudos (aged hamachi; scallops with chili jam); bluefin tuna carpaccio; Cambodian papaya salad; honey butter hoe cake; Mawn cutlet; scallops in crab gravy; mee caton; grilled chicken skewers; crème brûlée.
Drinks: Cocktails are well-made with a South Philly twist (like the barrel-aged mellow Jabroni Negroni) and on-theme Asian accents, such as Cambodian Kampot peppercorns for the Angkor Baby riff on a Michelada, or the chicory-flavored Viet coffee martini named after Washington Avenue’s Wing Phat Plaza.