![]() In the Houston area, you can find pockets of Asian businesses and culture from Sugar Land to Pasadena, but it's the communities on Bellaire Boulevard's Chinatown and Katy that are working together - not against each other - to make the region a hub for international brands.Īccording to census data, Harris County's Asian population grew 40 percent between 20, with more than 392,000 people identifying as Asian on the 2020 census, about 8 percent of the Harris County population. It isn't unusual for a city with a large Asian population to have two or more hubs of Asian businesses: Chicago has both its Chinatown and a concentrated Asian community on Argyle Street further north, and Lower Manhattan's Chinatown co-exists with nearby communities in Flushing, Queens. This is Katy Asian Town, a more recent addition to the region that has established itself as a destination for international businesses to enter the Houston market. All I ask is that in the future, maybe the Cheng family can send me a tweet ( when they unveil their newest creations.But drive west down I-10 and you'll find another booming set of retail centers filled with bakeries, boba shops and bánh mì restaurants. With my belly full, my tiny disgruntlement at not knowing about the secret menu subsided. ![]() The shreds of rich duck were also a nice alternative to salty ham bits I’ve found in other lesser versions. The gravy was thick and beefy but not remotely gloppy. The Sun Wah version, however, was firm, the eggs custardlike. ![]() I have no idea what the first ones tasted like, such that the dish has survived since the 1930s, but as of late, my experience with the dish has been one of gelatinous overcooked gravy-slathered mounds that jiggled like Pamela Anderson on a trampoline. The second awesome dish on the secret menu is the duck egg foo yung. Egg foo yung is one of those American-Cantonese hybrids that are the result of Tiki-culture ingenuity that capitalized on our taste for super sweet and salty things. At first bite, you’re kind of like, Hmm, that’s good, I’ve had crisp-skinned chicken before. On second bite, the juices of the flesh blow up in your mouth like a Chinese soup dumpling and you eat the whole plate in seconds flat. Lots of good stuff, but the highlights: Mike’s Chicken (so named after Kelly’s brother Mike), which features a roast chicken that’s deep-fried post-roasting to create a crisp crust for those juicy insides. ![]() So, secret menu in hand (it’s not really a menu, more like a handful of items), I stopped in a few weeks ago to check out the action. I mean, it wasn’t like some dude tweeted me and told me he was sleeping with my wife, but it was still a surprise. Instead I had to find out about it on the Sun Wah Facebook page. I’ve almost always ordered co-owner Kelly Cheng‘s recommended vegetable of the day–because when you get sweet stuffed honey-glazed eggplants or killer bitter greens dripping in garlic and lemon, who can say no?īut apparently, during all those forays, there lurked an untapped secret menu at Sun Wah. While I’m not quite the regular at Sun Wah that many in the Chicago food community are, I felt like I deserved the intel. I’d been going to Sun Wah Bar-B-Que on Argyle Street for more than three years, now eating my way through every Chinese barbecue item on the menu and ordering all the goodies written in black Sharpie on styrofoam plates nailed to the wall on the annex menu. ![]() Whatever your take on social networking, the Internet, and all manner of digital time-stealing inventions, one thing you can’t deny is the awesome power of these media to expose some serious eats. ![]()
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