Deep Ellum has an interesting new restaurant: Monkey King Noodle Co. has taken over and transformed the stand-alone building at 3014 Main Street that use to house Santiago's. Andrew Chen is the "noodle master" and chef of this new spot, and he says they're already rolling into soft-opening phase ("sorta open" reads a sign out front), but hope to be running at full noodle-slinging mode by the begining of October. Additionally, he says, they want to expand to a food truck by the end of the year.
This spot will specialize in hand-pulled noodles, soup dumplings and wontons. Chen says after the weather cools down a bit, they'll offer a fuller menu. According to a menu on their Facebook page, a bowl of beef noodles is just $6.
Chef Chen previously worked Times Ten Cellars in Lakewood and Fort Worth but has been working on this idea for a couple of years.
"Dallas has a pretty limited late-night food scene and very limited options when it come to legit Chinese food with the 635 Loop," says Chen. "Our goal is to bring some real, true-to-form Chinese street food to Dallas proper. This is the type of stuff you can eat and walk with after a late night out at the bars or for a quick lunch when you need to get out of the office."
Chen adds the noodles are hand pulled daily and the dumplings are made entirely from scratch.
