Nite Yun, owner of Nyum Bai, at her 2015 pop-up. She is now opening a stand in the Emeryville Public Market (Photo: Jen Fedrizzi, Special to The Chronicle)
For two years now, Nite Yun has been cooking Nyum Bai pop-up dinners around San Francisco and Oakland. She has traveled to Cambodia to do research and enrolled in La Cocina’s incubator program. Now she is embarking on her most ambitious pop-up yet: A stand in the Emeryville Public Market.
There, Nyum Bai will focus on the three noodle soups she has been honing in dinner after dinner: Kuay Teav Phnom Penh, a pork-and-shrimp broth with rice noodles, crispy garlic and herbs; Kuay Teav Koh Ko, with a thicker, more redolent beef broth, braised brisket and skinny egg noodes; and a vegetarian rice-noodle soup with roasted mushrooms and leeks.
“These are specials you can’t find anywhere,” she says.
[Read Anna Roth’s March 2016 review of Nyum Bai here.]
Yun, whose family emigrated from Cambodia to California via Thai refugee camps, grew up in Stockton, which has the second-largest Chambodian community in the United States. The recipes she’s serving are her family’s own, and she cooked for family and friends to get their approval before going public with her plans.
Nyum Bai’s noodle soups (photo: Nite Yun)
The Emeryville Public Market is almost halfway through the process of restocking its food court after City Center Realty Partners bought the market in 2012 and conducted major renovations. It has brought on new tenants such as Shiba Ramen, Koja Kitchen, and Mayo & Mustard, and currently has plans to add Periodic Table (Shiba Ramen’s beer and sake bar) and Fish Face Poke Bar.
The company offered La Cocina a six-month residency in the market’s “turnkey pop-up” stand, and the organization notified Yun, who had been looking at potential restaurant spaces. “I like the Public Market,” she said. “The opportunity came up and it felt right.”
After her tenure, which includes the option to extend the lease for another six months, Yun will have the opportunity to sign a permanent lease on another stall. The market will offer the pop-up space to someone else. It’s part of the market’s drive to create a “community feel,” says City Center senior vice president Tim Bacon. “It’s not a collection of large restaurant chains, but one of people who live in the area and want to start a business.”
Yun initially plans to be open 7 days a week for lunch and dinner. “I just want to take advantage of the time I have here and go all out,” she says.
She’s planning on opening at 4 p.m. tomorrow (Friday, Feb. 3), with little fanfare. The process of getting the stand up and running has been so fast that she hasn’t had time to plan.
“It’s a super soft opening,” she says. “I haven’t even told my mom yet. That’s how soft it is.”
Nyum Bai: Emeryville Public Market, 5959 Shellmound St., Emeryville, www.nyumbai.com. Open 11 a.m.-8 p.m. daily.