Meet Jook Sing, the Pop-Up Paying Homage to Iconic Chinese American Dishes | Eater Twin Cities
"Founded by Mike Yuen and Tony Gao, who met in 2021 on the opening team of Union Hmong Kitchen at Graze food hall, the pop-up grew from their shared experiences as Chinese American chefs and their personal grapplings with identity. Yuen, a veteran of the Lexington and Lat 14, grew up on the South Side of Chicago: "far enough away from Chinatown where my siblings and I were typically the only Asian kids in our neighborhood, and certainly the only half-white Chinese kids we knew," he says, though their parents raised them to take pride in their identity. Gao grew up in Robbinsdale, where his parents owned Canton Garden; his kitchen resume includes his family’s restaurant as well as the Birchwood Cafe, Saturday Dumpling Co. and Wise Acre Eatery, and he notes, "A telltale sign of a good Asian restaurant is a kid doing homework in a corner booth." The pop-up takes its name from a Cantonese term for a person of Chinese descent raised in a Western country; it "translates roughly to 'bamboo,' evoking the way that water poured into a bamboo stalk doesn’t flow out the other side, but rather stays suspended in the stalk’s sections." After wrestling with labels like "New Chinese" and "Contemporary Chinese," they settled on Chinese American as an imperfect but intentional homage to the cuisine that "made them who they are." Menu examples make that intent clear: crudo served with crisp lettuce evokes both the Sichuan dish "Couple’s Delight" and steak tartare; Hainanese chicken rice is imagined in slider form; and a sliced steak dish nods to the classic Chinese American beef and broccoli. "We don’t want to replace or reinvent classic Chinese American cuisine; we want to honor it," Yuen and Gao say. "Names and labels aside, we hope that our food brings you comfort and joy." Instagram and the pop-up's website are listed as the best places to find upcoming dates (they're popping up at Steady Pour later this month), and in the long run they are looking for a permanent home in the Twin Cities." - Justine Jones
