Souk Savanh is bringing its Lao sausage, rice ball salad and budget-priced rice plates to San Pablo Avenue.
Souk Savanh’s nam khao, or crispy rice ball salad, served at the Lao restaurant’s short-lived downtown Oakland location. The restaurant will reopen in Albany later this summer. (Luke Tsai/KQED)
The first time I ate Souk Savanh’s soulful, funk-forward kao soy noodle soup and outrageously crunchy rice ball salad in East Oakland, I immediately crowned the restaurant one of my favorite Lao spots in the Bay Area. The under-radar-spot closed in 2016, seemingly for good, but then reemerged 10 years later in downtown Oakland, where it briefly served some of the tastiest $10 rice plates in town — only to close again after just a couple of months.
The restaurant has simultaneously been one of the best and most elusive Lao food businesses that I’ve encountered in the Bay.
Now, husband-and-wife owners Tea Chaiyasith and Nai Sailee are hoping they’ve found a long-term home for their business. Souk Savanh 2.0 — technically 3.0? — will open in Albany as early as next month, in the space previously occupied by the Match Point Brewing taproom at 745 San Pablo Ave.
Like the most recent Oakland incarnation of the restaurant, the new Souk Savanh will be a fast-casual, counter-service spot, with a focus on budget-friendly rice and noodle plates starting at $10 a pop.
“We want to make our food very tasty and affordable for the community,” Chaiyasith says, “because not everyone can afford a $20 meal every day.”
The $10 Lao sausage plate at the newly opened Souk Savanh 2.0’s previous incarnation in Oakland.
As it turns out, the couple stayed active in the food and beverage industry during Souk Savanh’s 10-year hiatus. Chaiyasith ran a Rockin’ Crawfish franchise in Sacramento for about a year, after which he and Sailee opened End Zone, a bar in Oakland that evolved into a nightclub called Everything But Hugs & Kisses — and, eventually, the first short-lived reboot of Souk Savanh.
According to Chaiyasith, the main problem was that the landlord in Oakland kept raising the rent. The new Albany location was appealing in part because it’s much closer to Chaiyasith and Sailee’s home in Richmond, where for the past two years they’ve also built up a customer base through their pop-up, Pai’s Eatery (named after the first initials of their children, Princeton, Ava and Ivy), which is open twice a week at The Lot street food market. The plan, Chaiyasith says, is to continue those pop-ups even after the new restaurant opens.
Pai’s Eatery pops up at The Lot in Richmond on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Souk Savanh 2.0 will open at 745 San Pablo Ave. in Albany in the coming weeks — hopefully no later than the end of August, the owners say. Hours are TBD, but Chaiyasith says he plans to open for dinner six days a week and serve lunch on days when the Pai’s Eatery pop-up isn’t happening.