Nyum Bai pop-up: ‘Soul food for Cambodians’

The dry Kuy Tio Phnon Pehn from Nyum Bai Cambodian pop-up S.F. The dry Kuy Tio Phnon Pehn from Nyum Bai Cambodian pop-up S.F. Photo: Jen Fedrizzi, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Jen Fedrizzi, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close Nyum Bai pop-up: ‘Soul food for Cambodians’ 1 / 10 Back to Gallery

Nite Yun describes her newish Mission pop-up, Nyum Bai, as “soul food for Cambodians.” The 33-year-old grew up in California, not Cambodia — she was born in a Thai refugee camp to parents who had fled the Khmer Rouge, and the family immigrated to Stockton when she was a little girl.

Through food and Nyum Bai (a phrase that translates as “let’s eat”), Yun is trying to reclaim the Cambodia that her parents’ generation remembers fondly: the cuisine, music and culture that flourished in Phnom Penh in the ’50s and ’60s before it was nearly wiped out.

Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian and even Laotian restaurants are plentiful in the Bay Area, but there aren’t many outlets for Cambodian food, even though some culinary historians think it predates its neighbors’ cuisines. The Khmer empire once stretched over most of Southeast Asia, and the cuisine has influences from Chinese and Indian trading partners, as well as a century of French colonialism.

Photo: Jen Fedrizzi, Special To The Chronicle Nite Yun scoops broth into a bowl for the Kuy Tio Phnom Penh at...

Cambodian food is delicate. It’s less spicy than Thai, less funky than Laotian, and it has a strong focus on fresh herbs and produce. Its dishes have a few backbones not found in neighboring cuisines, like prahok, a fermented fish paste that gives an umami punch, and kroeung, a paste that Yun makes with lemongrass, garlic, galangal, makrut lime and turmeric. Peppercorns, rather than chiles, are used to add heat, and seafood is prominent, thanks to Cambodia’s many waterways.

The country’s culinary history was distilled into the refined menus of its royal courts. Not all of it has survived — books and documents were burned during the genocide, and recipes died with its roughly 2 million victims. However, enough has carried on to cause a recent resurgence in native cooking. Yun plans to change Nyum Bai’s menu every few months to show off some of these dishes, but as her pop-up gets its legs, she’s focusing on a few classics.

Photo: Jen Fedrizzi, Special To The Chronicle Beef curry with rice at Nyum Bai Cambodian pop-up. in S.F.

Kuy tio is a noodle soup often eaten for breakfast. It has a light pork-seafood broth, thin rice noodles, minced pork, shrimp, fried garlic, Thai basil, cilantro and bean sprouts. Like pho, each ingredient layer adds something essential to the mix. Kuy tio can be ordered as soup or “dry” with the broth on the side in a hyper-concentrated form that is a worthy competitor to any $7 mug of so-called bone broth.

Salads are popular in Cambodia, and a good showcase for the cuisine’s balance of textures, temperatures and flavors like sweet and bitter. In the pomelo salad, jewels of citrus are tossed in a lime-heavy dressing and topped with fresh herbs, toasted coconut and crunchy seeds and nuts. It all comes together to produce a dish that’s savory and sweet, salty and sour all at once.

Some dishes tread the familiar territory. Crisp, tightly wound fried spring rolls are filled with ground pork, wood ear mushrooms, carrots and glass noodles and served with a sweet chile dipping sauce. A beignet-like doughnut for dessert was more dense than airy. The turmeric-stained beef curry paste had a muddy heat that reminded me of Indian massaman curry, but the meat itself was overcooked and chewy.

A misstep isn’t entirely surprising given that Yun doesn’t have formal kitchen training. The idea for a Cambodian pop-up came to her in a flash, as some epiphanies do, when she was eating noodles in Phnom Penh a few years ago. It seemed to encapsulate everything she’d been trying to articulate about her parents and the diaspora.

Photo: Jen Fedrizzi, Special To The Chronicle Pomelo salad from Nyum Bai, a Cambodian pop-up in S.F.

On her return to San Francisco, she became involved with La Cocina, the nonprofit that helps immigrant women develop food businesses. With La Cocina’s support, she began to throw dinners at a few places around the Mission District. A fellow chef told her about a Monday and Tuesday opening at the place where she popped up, the Mission’s Gashead Tavern.

Yun drew on her graphic design background to create a groovy logo that calls back to the psychedelic surf-pop records of 1960s Cambodia. As Nyum Bai progresses, she hopes to incorporate more of that culture by playing more music in the bar and maybe having dress-up theme nights and dance parties.

For now, though, Yun’s happy to make her parents proud by bringing back a slice of a world that disappeared for them in the mid-1970s, as well as discovering her own heritage in the process.

“When my parents were growing up, before all the bad stuff, Cambodia was happening. People were carefree, there was a lot to do, the music was really fun,” she says. “That’s what Nyum Bai is centered around, the good times in Cambodia.”

Anna Roth is a freelance writer in San Francisco. Email: food@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @annaroth

What to order: Kuy tio noodles, wet or dry ($12), pomelo salad ($11).

Where: Nyum Bai at Gashead Tavern, 2351 Mission St. (at 19th Street), San Francisco, (415) 757-0554. www.nyumbai.com.

When: 6-10 p.m. Monday-Tuesday.