Chef Phila Lorn of Cambodian hot spot Mawn took home the James Beard Award for Emerging Chef on Monday, June 16, at the foundation’s annual gala in Chicago.
In his acceptance speech, Lorn dedicated the award to “having confidence in owning what you do as a craft” and also the many assumptions that Mawn had to fight through in its opening days, including “that the food wasn’t gonna be good enough, or authentic enough, [or] I wasn’t popular enough.”
“When I found out I was nominated for this award, the assumption was that I was gonna win it,” Lorn said to cheers from the crowd.
The chef was up against four other nominees in the category, including Nikhil Naiker of Nimki in Providence, Rhode Island, and Jane Sacro Chatham of Vicia in St. Louis, Missouri.
Mawn has quickly become one of Philly’s hardest-to-snag reservations since it opened two years ago in Philly’s Bella Vista neighborhood. The self-proclaimed “noodle house with ‘no rules’” serves dishes like a rich beef noodle katiew (a Cambodian noodle soup) with sliced wagyu and braised oxtail, and a crowd-favorite all star seafood rice packed with crab, bay scallops, shrimp, crab fat butter, and trout roe. There’s also the “Puck & See” family-style tasting menu, a fun option for groups where Lorn and his crew pick a variety of dishes to send out for $65 per person.
Looking forward, the team is hardly slowing down: Phila and Rachel Lorn, his wife and business partner, are about to open a second restaurant, a Southeast Asian oyster bar called Sao, in East Passyunk.
