With Sao, the James Beard-winning chef behind Mawn goes back for seconds

The snug dining room in the East Passyunk Avenue storefront was a full-throated madhouse at a recent preview dinner. Close-set tables were crammed edge to edge with funky papaya salads, shareable bowls of scallops and crab gravy, and plates of extravagantly topped crudos.

With your eyes closed, you might think you were at Mawn, Phila and Rachel Lorn’s tiny, Cambodian-inspired BYOB a mile away, one of the toughest reservations in town even before Phila won a James Beard Award for Emerging Chef in June.

But one step up at the raw bar, cooks were slicing bluefin tuna and dayboat scallops and shucking oysters. A bartender mixed drinks with South Philly-fied names like Wing Phat Plaza and Jabroni Negroni. Bar customers were bathed in the glow of a stylized oyster-and-pearl neon on the back wall.

Sao, the Lorns’ sequel, opens Wednesday. It has all of Mawn’s bold flexes, but its menu is packed with a changing assortment of crudos and six kinds of oysters, clams, mussels, and more while going lighter on the noodle dishes. Sao also has a liquor license.

With room for just 33 people throughout the dining room and bar — eight more seats than Mawn — Sao is also a shoebox.

“It was really important for us to keep it small,” Rachel Lorn said last week in a rare quiet moment. “We didn’t want to do that thing that people do, where they get a lot of success and then they’re like, ‘I want to go bigger.’”

She describes Mawn as “you’re coming into my house and I’m going to feed you, whereas [Sao] is like, ‘I decorated the house and I’m throwing a party.’ We’re getting a little more dressed up here.”

The Lorns’ story begins in Cambodia. In 1975, as the Khmer Rouge seized control, the country descended into violence and famine. An estimated 1.7 million people — nearly a quarter of the population — died from starvation, illness, or execution. Among those displaced were Loum Lorn and Sim Khim, who fled with their children to refugee camps in Thailand and later the Philippines. Christian missionaries sponsored the Buddhist family’s relocation to the United States.

The Lorns arrived in Philadelphia in 1985 and settled near Seventh and Jackson Streets in what Khim, the matriarch, calls “Sao Philly” — hence the new restaurant’s name.

In March 1986, Phila — named for their adopted city, pronounced “PEE-la” — came along. His parents both worked grueling hours on farms and in factories, while he grew up immersed in millennial life, his mom’s cooking, and trips to the Southeast Asian Market at FDR Park.

Phila entered the restaurant business in 2004, straight out of high school, as a food runner at 1225 Raw in Center City. “Honestly, I was just trying to stay out of trouble,” he said. “I was a kid from South Philly looking at a kitchen and saying, ‘Oh, wait. This isn’t McDonald’s.’ These were some real dudes. It was appealing.” One night, when a line cook called out sick, he was thrown onto the line. From then, he was hooked.

The restaurant world came with a price. From 20 to 24, he dove deep into its hard-partying culture. “You’re trying to fit in,” he said. “We were competitive even with staff meals. You work 12- or 14-hour shifts, and then you want to go out and experience this industry. Cocaine helped do that. A lot of drinking.”

At 24, he realized that he had to change. “I got real serious about food, and I just couldn’t afford to be hung over.”

In 2012, at 26, he met Rachel Barag, who grew up in East Falls, while they worked at Zama, the Japanese restaurant near Rittenhouse Square. “I became real serious about being a better version of myself,” he said. “I didn’t want to be that guy on a fryer his whole life. I took a step back and looked at the culinary art of it. I was really interested in how much you can make from food, too — the business aspect of it.

“When I met Rachel, I met another lifer in more than one sense,” Phila said. “She listened to me. If you’re from where we’re from, when we are from, we can make the same inside jokes, which makes these 12-, 14-hour shifts go a lot faster.”

Rachel said she liked Phila’s confidence and sense of humor. “And he wasn’t corny — he was genuine,” she said.

They worked on the opening team of Zama offshoot CoZara in University City in 2014. Phila cooked at Will BYOB, Stock, Barbuzzo, Terrain, and Mighty Bread Co., doing a chef’s residency in 2021 under José Garces at Volvér as they dreamed of opening their own restaurant. Rachel, meanwhile, became banquet director at the Logan Hotel.

In 2022, after scoping out various locations, including Sao’s current spot at 1710 E. Passyunk Ave. (too expensive at the time), they found a fit at the former Kalaya space at 764 S. Ninth St. With $60,000 from his mother’s savings — “where the [heck] did she get that?” Phila said — and $40,000 from Rachel’s mom, they opened Mawn in March 2023. (The name means “chicken” in Khmer. “Back in Cambodia, we ate chicken only when there was no gunfire or bombs,” Phila said.)

Mawn quickly became a hit. In his review, Inquirer critic Craig LaBan wrote that the food is “a thrill to eat, full of vivid, soulful flavors that add up to one of the most exciting openings in 2023. That’s why I have no doubt this promising new restaurant will continue to grow, evolve, and refine its voice.” By spring 2024, Rachel left her hotel job to run Mawn full time.

Sao reflects both Cambodian and Jersey Shore influences. Rachel’s father, Marc Barag, grew up in Margate — her grandparents owned the Boardwalk Motel in Atlantic City from 1957 to 1973. As a boy, Marc collected laundry from guest rooms before working the snack bar. He died in 2014, but his presence lives on at Sao — a vintage cash register from the motel sits behind the bar. “This is me trying to pay homage to her father,” Phila said. “Sao is my mom’s kitchen and her dad’s upbringing — Jersey and Cambodian, all at one table.”

“My mom is supercritical — like, ‘salt is too salty, sugar is too sweet’ — but she was here in the back and she was proud,” Phila said. “Rachel’s mom doesn’t stop crying when she walks in.”

They have a partner in Sao: Jesse Levinson, whose wife, Naomi Weiss, met Rachel in second grade; they grew up like cousins. Levinson was a bartender before he left for a real estate career.

During their search for Sao, Rachel asked Levinson to help them scope out a shuttered luncheonette at Ninth and Mifflin Streets. That didn’t pan out, but they became partners with a handshake. Another spot, the former Black & Brew coffee shop on East Passyunk, didn’t work. But then broker Veronica Blum called with a nearby option, and it had a liquor license. It was 1710 E. Passyunk. “The rest is history,” Phila said.

Mawn employs 11, while Sao has a staff of 15. Sao will adopt Mawn’s Wednesday-to-Saturday schedule and in coming months will add lunch, as well. “Our people can plan their lives a little bit, which you usually can’t in this industry,” Rachel said. “We go hard those four days, then say, ‘Have a good weekend!’ We’ve built a culture that’s family-oriented.”

That culture extends to hiring. “At Mawn, if I didn’t know you, we wouldn’t hire you,” Phila said. At Sao, “if I like you but you haven’t worked with us, you have to be vouched for by at least three people.” Levinson describes his role at Sao as “Swiss army knife,” supporting general manager Kelly Brophy, who’s worked for a line of restaurants including Vetri, Nunu, Cheu Fishtown, and Kensington Quarters.

Brophy’s help will allow the Lorns to juggle their afternoons, which includes shuttling son Otis, who is almost 4, home from school.

Though restaurant lifers, the Lorns insist that they’re still learning. “If you put yourself in a beginner’s mindset, you leave yourself open to learning,” Phila said. “This is our second restaurant, and we still don’t know [squat]. I love that we don’t know things together.”

Asked if a third restaurant might be next, Rachel shook her head and replied, “No comment.”

Sao is sold out for September but will put October online at noon Sept. 17. Both restaurants will open their reservations at noon on the 1st for the following month. (Typically, all of Mawn’s 1,300 dinner seats are snapped up in just a few frustrating seconds; lunch is walk-in only, and draws lines down the block.)

Of Sao’s 10 bar seats, four will be left open for walk-ins. “We’re basically doing two seatings at the bar and two full reservation turns [in the dining room], and for the last turn, we’re not taking reservations all the way to the end, so there will be opportunity for more walk-ins toward the end of the night,” Rachel said. At Sao, “there’s more opportunity for people to slip in for a drink and a crudo on the early side. If our first reservation doesn’t come till 6, I’m happy to get you in for that.”

With patience, Rachel said, anyone can get in and even become a regular. “Our regulars are people who have more flexibility,” Rachel said. “They check [OpenTable] every day. They set notifications for any cancellations. Sometimes people will walk by and I’ll be like, ‘You know what? This person’s getting up early, and my next one isn’t coming till 9. Do you want to take an hour’s time?’

“A lot of times, people that live in the neighborhood will walk over and shoot their shot,” Rachel said. “Sometimes they come at 4:30, sometimes they come at 9 o’clock. They’re not picky.”