The owner of the Vietnamese sandwich shop moving into a Main Street pizza place used to eat there as a kid.
Nami is opening its third location at 3030 Main Street in Mount Pleasant, the previous Papa’s Gourmet Pizza unit.
Amini Construction broke the news on Instagram on July 18, posting from the front of the unit.
“Nami Vietnamese Main Street is COMING SOON,” the post read. “Location Number 3 in the heart of Vancouver.”
A second post on July 27 went further, with owner Kevin walking through the layout of the new shop, and that is where he mentioned coming to Papa’s as a kid.
There is no opening date yet.
For anyone who has only seen Nami downtown, the Main Street move is a genuine change of setting.
Nami started as a food truck in April 2019 before Kevin, a UBC graduate whose parents ran a Vietnamese restaurant on Kingsway, moved it into bricks and mortar.
The first shop went into 885 West Georgia Street inside the HSBC building, and the second opened at Oceanic Plaza on West Hastings this past April.
Both of those are grab-and-go counters built around the downtown office lunch rush, with banh mi, vermicelli bowls, broken rice plates and Vietnamese coffee.
The Main Street block that Nami is landing on has been seeing quite a bit of changes this year.
Emeri took the old Goldilocks unit in June, Odd Burger closed its only Vancouver location in July, and AFURI’s Mount Pleasant ramen shop became Sushi Nami inside a month.
Papa’s leaving adds the longest-running tenant of the lot to that list.
The pizza and pasta shop opened here in 1995 and closed after about 30 years on the block, long enough that its yellow striped awning became the landmark people navigate by.
The construction post drew a run of congratulations rather than complaints, which is not always how these go when a three-decade tenant is the one being replaced.
For now the yellow door is still there and the build out is just starting.
Nami Main Street joins other upcoming Vancouver food spots like Hen in Mount Pleasant, Como Ultramar, and Maria Celeste in Fraserhood.
For more new and upcoming food spots in Metro Vancouver, take a peek at our tracker here, and subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
Address: 3030 Main Street, Vancouver, BC V5T 3G5