DINING FEATURE
BY SAMANTHA VAN DYKE
Dan Dan Pork Noodles ($12) features spicy ground pork ragu in a chicken broth.
SAMANTHA VAN DYKECOMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
Beef Stir Fry ($12.50) features prime Angus sirloin.
Owner Andrew Chen started Monkey King Noodle Company in 2013.
Monkey King Noodle Company’s Richardson location opened in late 2020.
SAMANTHA VAN DYKECOMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
COURTESY SONALI KUMAR
SAMANTHA VAN DYKECOMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
MonkeyKingNoodle Company Richardson native shares Taiwanese cuisine with community T he rst Monkey King Noodle company started in 2013 in what used to be a taco stand
MonkeyKingNoodle Co. 520 Lockwood Drive, Ste. 100, Richardson 469-372-1334 www.monkeykingnoodlecompany.com Hours: Mon. closed, Sun. and Tue.-Thu. 11 a.m.-9 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 11 a.m.-10 p.m.
old taco stand. Today, there are six Monkey King restaurants across Dallas-Fort Worth, including the Richardson location, which opened Dec. 7, 2020. Chen was born and raised in Richardson and that, along with the city’s diverse population, made it a great market for a Monkey King Noodle Company, Kumar said. “We handmake everything at our commissary, and then it gets sent out to all six of our restau- rants,” said Kumar, who joined the company in 2019 after seeing the restaurant’s plan for expansion. “My job originally was to just part- ner in development and marketing,” she said. “Now I’ve probably done basically everything you can do.”
Kumar said Monkey King, which was named after a popular comic series in China, is known for its simplistic avors. “It’s pretty authentic to what you would get in Taiwan. It isn’t West- ernized,” Kumar said. “It’s meant to be heavy on the palate with those fundamental avors of Asian cooking—sesame, ginger, garlic, scallions, those kinds of things.” Customers can dine on a variety of noodles, stir frys, soups, dump- lings and more. All of Chen’s dishes from the original location are still there, with some more unique twists such as the brisket fried rice added in to step out of the street food bubble, Kumar said. To assist with the expansion,
story YOUR BUSINESS HAS A co-owner Sonali Kumar said. “It actually started as a bet between [Chen] and his friends,” Kumar said. “The location was super inexpensive, so there wasn’t a big risk.” Chen ran the stand himself, hand-making everything from dumplings and egg rolls to hand- pulled noodles, Kumar said. The rst Monkey King restaurant opened in 2015 across from the in Dallas’ Deep Ellum. There were not any tables or chairs, just lines of hungry patrons wrapped around the block waiting to try Andrew Chen’s authentic Taiwanese street food,
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Law Offices of Dana D. Huffman, P.C. BERKNER HIGH STEPHEN F. AUSTIN TEXAS WESELYAN LAW 26 YEARS IN PRACTICE ESTATE PLANNING • PROBATE • MEDIATION CIVIL/FAMILY/CPS • ARBITRATION START THE NEWYEAR OFF RIGHT BY GETTING YOUR ESTATE AFFAIRS IN ORDER! CONTACT OUR OFFICE ABOUT REVOCABLE TRANSFER ON DEATH DEEDS Andrew Dilda was made a partner and culinary director in October 2021. Kumar said they hope to open more restaurants in DFW, Colorado and Oklahoma. “We think those places are underserved for the kind of food we have, so we’re denitely looking at that,” she said.
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RICHARDSON EDITION • JANUARY 2022
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