Tastes Of Northern China Hit New Haven

Growing up in northern China’s Liaoning Province, Yong Zhao learned early to love food that shared its traditions — and geographic borders — with North Korea: garlic and scallions, chili peppers, heavy meat, and a lot of what he describes as ​“umami taste.”

But when he traveled to New Haven for school, it was science, and not cuisine, that weighed most heavily on his mind.

Four hundred thirty-one miles away in Beijing, Wanting Zhang was growing up in a home where food was love. And nothing communicated family more than being around the dinner table, or learning to make a dish the way her grandmother made it. When she made the choice to attend Yale for a degree in environmental law and policy, food and the restaurant business were equally far from her thoughts.

She missed the food of her adolescence, though.

Yong Zhao did too. So much so that it led to an unexpected business plan after the two met in New Haven and realized how deeply they wished there were something similar thousands of miles away from home.

That plan produced Junzi Kitchen, the popular spot on Broadway known for its flavor-packed Jianbing and assembly line-style noodle dishes.

Since its opening in October 2015, the two said, the restaurant has been blessedly packed. Hungry undergraduates and New Haveners walk into the small space through its 9 p.m. closing time, and return for a new ​“Night Lunch” pop-up series on Wednesdays.

The two — now both 31, and two-thirds of the three-person team that thought up the street-food-inspired spot — talked with host Betsy Kim of WNHH radio’s ​“Law, Life & Culture” program about how the restaurant got started when the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Science grads finished school, what recipes they’ve decided to keep, and what their plans are for the future.

Following are excerpts from that interview; you can click on the sound file with the full episode at the bottom of this story.

You both received master’s degrees from Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. How did you go from there to opening a restaurant?

WZ: I guess for me it’s a family thing. I grow up with my grandma. She’s a person never really say I love you, but she always cook for me. So I totally feel that the love and care through the food. I really have always feel that’s how you give somebody care. And my parents used to have restaurants. So it’s a little bit like family traditions … After I graduate, I become really interested in the food industry, and that’s how I get started.

YZ: I think I’m a big fast food fan. I don’t cook myself … When I was here without Junzi Kitchen, it was like the food choice I have, very limited. For something fast, simple, tasty to me. I was wishing to have something from my college, from my hometown that is like … something good to go. That’s where I started from. Also, trying to become an entrepreneur in America. I was thinking … OK, maybe I have a chance to open something I really like. Simple, healthy and delicious food.

Did you choose New Haven just because you were here?

YZ: I think as immigrants the first step we have … the first step was like, New Haven’s our first impression of America, the first couple of years spent here. We know how to basically adapt into the environment in New Haven.

So Wanting, what is your impression of America?

WZ: I landed in Boston Logan Airport in 2007, and it was a little bit chill on that day compared with the normal August summer. The first thing I feel is really friendly. I was holding a map in the airport — I’m like really lost. And then … somebody approached me to say ​‘Hi! How can I help you?’ So that’s a great impression.

What does Junzi mean? Does it mean gentleman or person of noble birth?

YZ: Junzi is a very very old term from even before Confucius. But Confucius used it many times … as the ideal personality. Literally it means ​‘the son of lord’ … a noble person, a mensch, this sort of figure that is in their philosophy as ideal.

So why did you name your restaurant Junzi?

YZ: I think when we see the new brand as food … we want it as more than lifestyle, but as some old wisdom we had for a longtime history. Right now, it’s very hard to feel from our culture here … previous immigration has really adapted. We want to … as a new wave of immigration, we want to do something more from our own culture.

Wanting, do you alter the food for the American palate?

WZ: I think the first thing we were asking was: What is the American palate and how to define it? And we did a lot of taste testings with our customers. We actually find … it’s really hard to find one definition. So we kind of want to step back and think about what our customers like. We find they like the real authentic food. For us, we’re able to find those tastes from the northern Chinese cuisines that [are] still authentic and kind of like homestyle cooking, but then our customers like it.

I do think when you visit other countries, there is such thing as national character. For example Americans … the general perception of the national character is that they’re open and friendly, outgoing and even entrepreneurial. I do think countries have their own positive national characteristics. How would you describe northern China’s national character? 

WZ: I think that’s like Texas people a lot, actually, because they’re strong, independent, and passionate spirit, and also the love for barbecue.

YZ: From a historical point of view, it’s a complex concept. Before 1800, China was a pretty arrogant country … they called themselves the central kingdom. But then after 1800, they start to be beaten down by colonialism and northern society, these battleships. They start to think of themselves into new positions, but they still kind of have this impulsive idea to become something great again.

How do you keep it so uniformly consistent?

YZ: I’m trained as a scientist So, basically, I use environmental methodology to basically convert this knowledge into protocols. The biggest challenge is … we have to find out how we can make the food work so we can have the same taste but the whole procedure making this is totally different in the American environment. That’s the biggest challenge we have so far.

How do you translate the national character that you described to the food that people enjoy?

WZ: I think that one thing is definitely in northern China, they use a lot of soy as the main protein source. So we use lots of that ingredients in our restaurant, and that transform to our tofu dish. So we use sauces with it and that’s kind of become a main flavor of that. That flavor is complicated. It’s rich, and kind of a representation of the very diversified personalities of the people in the region.

YZ: From our perspective … northern Chinese people want simple food. It’s based on their immigration pattern. So that’s kind of a simple … we have many different kind of dishes … people always choose the simple ones.

As graduates of Yale’s Forestry & Environmental Studies School, are you applying your education to sustainability and eco-friendly practices to Junzi?

WZ: We really believe in the region that the sustainability, the eco-friendly, and also the community is part of the vision of the whole business.

This episode of ​“Law, Life & Culture” was made possible in part by Frontier Communications and the ​“Open for Business” series on WNHH radio. Frontier is proud to be Connecticut’s hometown provider of TV, Internet and Phone for your home and business. Their number is 1.888.Frontier and their website is frontier.com. To listen to the full episode, click on or download the audio above, or check out WNHH’s ​“WNHH Arts Mix” on Soundcloud or iTunes.