When walking into SAAP just before the beginning of their dinner service, one is immediately struck with how energetic the place is even before any customers arrive. With a hint of lemongrass in the air, and dishes delicately clattering onto tables, it’s easy to notice the rhythm of a harmonious team hard at work. Smiling and cracking jokes while prepping glassware at the bar, everyone working clearly enjoys helping to bring Chef and Owner Lon Bounsanga’s vision to life.
Lon: “I have a great team that came with me from Bida Manda and Brewery Bhavana. Getting to work with these people is awesome. Everybody is different in a good way, and that’s what makes us so special. I am so lucky to have staff that will follow me to the end of the world.”
Lon and his wife, Annmarie, are a dynamic duo. The two originally met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, even though Lon spent his early childhood in Laos.
Lon: “My family and I came to the states in 1979. Back in the late 70s and early 80s when the war was going on in Laos, Americans were able to sponsor immigrants to come over to the United States to have a better life. We were part of that transition. Even though we had come to a different country, it seemed like it was a different planet. We didn’t know what a grocery store was, and it was hard to find products there that we grew up eating in Laos. Everything was very new to us. But we still had our culture, the things that we did, the things that we loved, and the food that we ate on a daily basis.”
Annmarie: “Lon’s whole street was Laotian, and I grew up in an Irish-German neighborhood. Everybody knew everybody there. If you did something wrong, someone would tell your parents before you even got home! That’s what it’s like here, Everybody knows everybody. They play a part in each others lives.”
For Lon and Annmarie, food was something that had always brought family and community together.
Lon: “Our cuisine is mainly sharing. We would invite friends and family over and share food with them. Growing up and while we were dating, whenever we would share a meal the whole neighborhood would share a meal with us. It wasn’t just our family, it was neighbors and friends.”
Annmarie: “For Lon, Laotian food is family. Everything is done over food, decisions are made over food. That’s how you share when there’s not a lot of money.”
Lon’s journey from that Laotian street in Philadelphia to opening SAAP brought him to work in many restaurants, but it started at an unlikely place.
Lon: “When Denny’s first opened up back in the 80s I was one of the first cooks to work there, and let me just say, Denny’s was a very fast-paced restaurant. If you could survive Denny’s, you could survive anywhere. The kitchen was very small, but you are serving 500 to 600 guests per shift. And if you can survive that, you can go anywhere.”
With that mentality, Lon went on to work in many restaurants throughout Philadelphia, while also spending time at the Culinary Institute of America, absorbing as much information as he could. He eventually worked with Georges Perrier at Le Bec-Fin, one of the top French restaurants in Philadelphia, before coming to North Carolina. He worked as the Executive Chef at the Carolina Country Club for a little over a year and then started to consider opening his own restaurant.
Lon: “I was not sure exactly what restaurant, but Ann had always been saying that I should open a Laotian restaurant. I was looking for a vacant spot that I could go in and make my own, and as I was looking through the ads, I came across a Craigslist listing looking for a Laotian chef. I thought ‘oh this must be a hoax’, but I reached out to the guy and learned his family came from where my dad was from in Laos, and our towns were so close to each other that we could have been relatives for as far as I knew!”
The two opened Bida Manda in Raleigh together, which was one of only a few Laotian restaurants in the country. From there, they then opened the critically acclaimed Brewery Bhavana.
Lon: “For a long time, I never worked in a place where it was my Laotian food. The restaurants I worked in were more of a French atmosphere, or Italian, or a fusion. The hardest part of opening a Laotian restaurant was figuring out how to get everyone to understand Laotian food, because for a lot of people it’s very new to them.”
With Lon’s tremendous culinary experience and previous restaurant success, his newest restaurant, SAAP, came together in just a few months.
Lon: “Ann said to me when we did Bida I aged 10 years! And when we did Bhavana it was another 10 years! But now with SAAP, it only took six months to start everything.”
Annmarie: “It was the most seamless thing, I thought ‘it has to be meant to be’.”
Saap means delicious in Lao, an apt description for the dishes that Lon carefully crafts for the menu.
Lon: “Every dish that I put on the menu comes from what I grew up with. My parents were a very big influence on the menu, combined with street food concepts. I put things on the menu that I want to share with our guests. As far as our cuisine goes, it’s very savory, very earthy and very clean. All the ingredients that we use here are fresh daily. We use a lot of herbs like basil, cilantro, ginger, galangal and garlic. Even ones you might not have heard of like kaffir lime leaves, used like a bay leaf in western cuisine. “
It’s not just the food that makes SAAP so special. Lon and Annmarie make it clear that SAAP’s extra magic comes from the community that surrounds it.
Annmarie: “To describe the restaurant itself, the going consensus is ‘energetic’. You’re not going to come in and get that quiet face-to-face dinner. Everybody here knows everybody, so they are at each other’s tables saying ‘hey taste this!’.”
Lon: “Yeah, we had 5 tables that would just share their food with each other!”
Annmarie: “There’s never a day where someone doesn’t come in and know another person.”
Lon: “Coming from Raleigh, it’s very interesting how the clients that we have in Raleigh come to the restaurants that I’ve started and are very different than here. Over here it’s more family oriented.”
Annmarie: “It’s more community. It’s like how we were raised back home.”
Lon: “I would sit at the bar at Bida Manda, and I would watch a table looking over at another table to see what they have so they could order it. Here at SAAP they would just share what they are having!”
Annmarie: “Or they will even stop and ask you ‘what is that?’, ‘what’s that drink?’, ‘what’s on that plate?’”
From the day SAAP moved into Downtown Cary, the community made sure Lon and Annmarie knew how excited they were to have them.
Lon: “There are a couple of tenants upstairs that approached us and said that the reason why they moved into this building is that we moved over here. The stories that people share with us are very kind. When we were doing the renovations in the restaurant we had people here just help us carry stuff in. Like ‘let me get that door for you’. They were so nice, and it’s been a very easy transition. It can be very hard to adapt to a new environment, but it didn’t feel new. Everyone knew us and knew that this was going to be a family business, and this is a very family oriented community. It was like a perfect storybook fit.”
Annmarie: “Cary has been very welcoming. People here don’t mind trying new things either. They are very open to new cultures. We have a lot of regulars, so it’s really become a part of a kind of family here also. We have just as many regulars as we do people who come in for the first time.”
Finally, on a more personal level for Lon and Annmarie, SAAP has done more than bring the Downtown Cary community together. Much like their meals on that Laotian street in Philadelphia, SAAP is bringing their family together.
Lon: “Four out of six of the kids that we have work here. Ann and I have a big family and we love a big family. Our youngest is 21 and she left the house, she’s on her own, and our mindset was ‘how can we bring our family back together’. Opening this restaurant was part of bringing our family back together. We get to see them and share a meal together before they go back to their homes.”
You can visit SAAP at 370 South Walker Street, Cary, NC. They are open for dinner every night from Tuesday to Sunday, and serve lunch from Wednesday to Sunday. If you want to ensure a spot for lunch or dinner, be sure to make a reservation here.