BROOKLINE — Veo Robert has spent most of his professional career as a chef mastering European cuisine in some of Boston’s best restaurants. Now, in the wake of homesickness for the food of his youth following the COVID-19 pandemic, he is staging pop-up dinners to test the area’s appetite for the dishes of his native Laos.
Recently, at Merai bar in Brookline Village, Robert oversaw a menu that included grilled quahogs topped with fried garlic and spicy Jaew Som sauce, sausage patties with a papaya slaw that tingled the mouth, and medium rare steak slices generously dusted with an aromatic mix of lemon grass and kaffir lime.
Robert’s pop-ups operate under the banner of Phaeng & Phiu, an eponym of his dad and mom’s names. Early indications suggest diners are ready to embrace Robert’s take on Southeast Asian food based on a few sold-out events. Several Merai seatings were booked solid within 36 hours, and two nights at Rubato in Quincy, at $163 per ticket, sold out a week before service. Another event, at $160 per person, is planned for April 27 at Comfort Kitchen in Dorchester.
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“It’s hard not to get choked up when I see that I’m putting the food out there that I might not have been proud of, like 10-15 years ago, and people are enjoying it,” Robert says. “And I don’t have to keep asking them: Is this too spicy? Is this too funky?” Another plus: “I get to cook with some of my chef friends.”
On hand to help Robert are some of the region’s Asian culinary standouts who are also doing their own pop-ups: Laurence Louie of Rubato in Quincy, Ashley Lujares of Mango Tao Yum and a Food Network Chopped champion, Peter Nguyen of Lê Madeline in Quincy, and Thanaphon “Song” Authaiphan of Merai and nearby Mahaniyom, both in Brookline. The friendships have been nurtured over Robert’s years working at Radius, Myers+Chang, Menton, Bar Mezzana, Shore Leave, and other restaurants.
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“We have found our tribe,” says Lujares, who worked with Robert at Myers+Chang and specializes in Filipino dishes. “We’re all Asian Americans and in the industry. [A pop-up] is our way to cook our food and help each other out. And, also, time to hang out again in a happy setting and having fun.”
Pop-ups have become increasingly prevalent since the pandemic. A Yelp June 2024 study found pop-ups were up a whopping 155 percent between May 2023 and April 2024 from the previous year. The study said pop-ups have “continued to see the most significant growth as restaurateurs debuted new temporary concepts with limited menus to test diners’ interest.”
Pop-ups are comparable to the tech practice of studying the “minimum viable product” to determine what people want to get their hands on before a larger investment is made, says Trish Fontanilla, a Boston community and experience consultant and self-described “lover of all foods” who attended the Rubato event. “If you do the data correctly, you can [quickly] find out what works,” she says.
Robert says the impetus for his pop-up is to bring attention to Lao food and culture. He’s been cooking other people’s food since he was 14. He got his start in his aunt’s restaurant, the Thai Star in Providence, after his family emigrated from Laos following his dad’s death. The fact that Robert’s Laotian family began a Thai restaurant, rather than cooking culturally closer to home, is not uncommon among the Asian diaspora.
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While 12 percent of all US restaurants serve Asian food, seven out of 10 focus on Japanese, Chinese, or Thai cuisines, according to a May 2023 Pew Research Center report. The Pew Center says those groups constitute only 33 percent of the entire US Asian population of more than 24 million. Laotians, meanwhile, represent just under 5 percent of the total US Asian population in 2023, per USA Facts. (The largest Laotian communities in New England are in Middlesex County and Providence, according to US Census data.)
Robert’s journey away from fine dining coincided with the 2020 COVID outbreak that led to restrictions on restaurant service. He was nearing 40 years old and evaluating his life. His wife — Carla Cornejo, who is a restaurant consultant and cofounder of Prepshift with Irene Li of Mei Mei — urged Robert to revisit his native country.
Last December, Robert went to his parents’ hometown of Luang Prabang in Northern Laos. He also learned, in conversations with his mom, to fully embrace the value of Lao hospitality. “We have a word for it: ‘liang.’ It literally means to feed or to nurture, but it’s so much more than that,’ he says. “It’s an obligation to make guests feel welcome and at home.”
That hospitality ethos shone at the Rubato event, says Fontanilla. She applauds Robert for talking to guests, welcoming feedback about his food, and for his social media posts. “These days, getting back to the simplicity in food is a differentiator” in dining, Fontanilla says. “If people don’t like the food, it doesn’t matter how velvety your chairs are; nothing else will save it.”
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Lujares believes the pop-up approach has served Robert well. “I’ve known Veo for a very long time, but I’ve seen a change in him and even in his food,” she says. “He’s happier as a person right now.
“I know he was nervous cooking his food. Being an Asian-American, you have to find Asian identity and your American identity. He struggled with that. I think that’s why we all relate. I told him: ‘I didn’t know you cooked like this. You did a good job, bro!’”
Robert hopes to find a permanent home for his concept. But, he says, “If Phaeng & Phiu does not end up in a brick-and-mortar restaurant, but I get you beginning to talk more about Lao food in Boston, that would make me really, really happy.”
Check the Phaeng & Phiu Instagram account for information about pop-ups: www.instagram.com/phaengandphiu. Tickets to the pop-up at Comfort Kitchen can be purchased here, at www.opentable.com/r/comfort-kitchen-boston.
Peggy Hernandez can be reached at peggyhernandezboston@gmail.com. Follow her on Instagram @peggy_hernandez.