At the time, she was still the chef de cuisine at Revelry, which has since closed; after leaving Revelry, she brought Sunshine Noodles to the patio at North Mississippi bar Psychic, then on hiatus.
In the two years between then and now, Lam has grown exponentially as a chef and business woman: running the kitchen at Revelry in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic, launching her own fried chicken brand, and managing a bar on North Mississippi.
Over the last few years, she developed a friendship with Jasper Shen and Laura Tran at XLB; when they told her they wanted to give up their Northwest Portland location to focus on the Williams restaurant, they offered her the space.
The menu will also involve things that are not noodles: She wants to bring back her turmeric pancake bites from early Sunshine pop-ups, revive the lime pepper wings for a bit, and maybe introduce fish sauce chicken her friends called “chicken candy.” “I had a bunch of friends over, they were all hungry, and I wanted to be able to make food without making a huge mess,” she says.
“There’s a part of me that wants to have someone go around and people can order them like dim-sum, and then stamp people’s arms, but I don’t know how people will feel about that,” she says.
But even though Sunshine is hopping across the river, Lam wants to retain the pop-up’s “Blade Runner-meets-Hello Kitty” aesthetic, in her words, which naturally fits the former XLB space.