Meet the Owners
Bia Hawang
Bia Hawang grew up in a household where cooking and music were the same thing. Her family ran a Thai classical music band, and meals were how the whole operation held together — prepared by Bia, eaten together, remembered long after the music stopped. Food was never separate from feeling. That early understanding never left her.
After moving to the United States, she spent nearly two decades in hospitality — behind bars, not stoves — building an intuition for what guests actually want from a night out. It wasn’t until she met her husband, Bon Atcharawan, that the kitchen called her back. They opened their first restaurant together, Lamoon, and then Lamaii in 2019. When the pandemic arrived and temporarily closed everything, Bia treated the pause as a residency: refining technique, deepening her understanding of Thai regional cooking, and beginning to think seriously about how food and wine could speak to each other.
“Thai food has always been complex. I just want people to slow down enough to taste it.”
That thinking shows up most clearly in dishes like Salmon Noir — her reinvention of Goong Chae Nam Pla, a classic Thai raw shrimp preparation. Bia replaced the shrimp with sashimi-grade king salmon, reworked the seafood sauce with soy and lemon, and finished it with white truffle oil. The result is a dish that is unmistakably Thai and entirely her own.
In the kitchen, Bia leads the way she cooks — with precision and without ego. Her team attends wine classes alongside the dining room staff, because she believes understanding what’s in the glass makes every cook a better one. That same curiosity carries over to the wine program, which she shapes alongside Bon, bringing a chef’s instinct for flavor to every pairing decision.
Lamaii is not a restaurant built around a single dish or a signature style. It is built around a point of view — that Thai cuisine, given the right room, can be as nuanced and rewarding as any food in the world. That is what Bia is here to show.
Bon Atcharawan
Bon Atcharawan’s relationship with wine and Thai food goes back further than most guests realize. Before Lamaii, he was the quiet force behind the scenes at Chada Thai and Chada Street — two of Las Vegas Chinatown’s most beloved restaurants — where his conviction that Thai cuisine deserved a serious wine program first took shape.
When he and his wife, Chef Bia Hawang, opened Lamaii in 2019, that conviction came with them. In 2023, Bon stepped fully into the role of sommelier, taking over the wine program and making it entirely his own. What he built reflects a sensibility shaped by years of watching food and wine interact at the table: the list leans toward bottles with character over prestige — volcanic wines, skin-contact rarities, oxidative Burgundies, and cult producers chosen not by category, but by feeling.
The wine program at Lamaii is a true collaboration. Chef Bia brings her deep understanding of Thai flavor to the process — her palate for spice, acidity, and texture shapes which bottles make the list and how they are paired. Together, they approach the program the same way they approach the kitchen: as partners, with the guest’s experience at the center of every decision.
That approach has earned Lamaii the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence, recognition from the Star Wine List, and a 3-Star accreditation from the World of Fine Wine — three of the most respected voices in the global wine industry. But for Bon, the real measure is simpler: a guest who arrives knowing little about wine, and leaves genuinely curious.
Today he oversees the wine programs across both Lamaii locations — the original in Chinatown and the Henderson outpost on St. Rose Parkway — each shaped by the same belief that great wine should be accessible, surprising, and always in service of the food.