NYC - LES: Mission Chinese Food New York takeout - Thrice Cooked Bacon | Thrice Cooked bacon with Shanghainese rice cakes, tofu skin, bitter melon and chili oil.
Mission Chinese Food New York, at 154 Orchard Street, had a soft opening on Saturday, May 19, 2012. Chef Danny Bowien, born in Korea, but adopted and raised in Oklahoma, was named a semifinalist for the James Beard Rising Star Chef of the Year 2012 award. Like its San Francisco original, Mission Chinese maintains a social conscience, donating 75 cents from each main course Food Bank for New York City.
The original Mission Chinese Food opened in 2011 within Lung Shan Restaurant in San Francisco. Its origins trace to a sublet Guatemalan taco cart at 21st and Mission, where chef Anthony Myint and his wife Karen Leibowitz began selling their PB&J's--pork-belly and jicama flatbreads--under the name Mission Street Food in 2008. fter a month's worth of sellouts, they moved their operation into Lung Shan, a previously unremarkable Chinese takeout joint owned by Sue and Lian Zhou since 2002. Semiweekly, they would share the kitchen, serving creative upscale dishes. Soon they began inviting local chefs to choose a theme and collaborate on dishes, donating profits to local food pantries and soup kitchens. In July 2011, they rebranded themselves Mission Chinese and brought in chef Bowien, who filled the menu with a quirky, responsibly sourced take on Chinese cooking. When Bowien expanded east, he left the original location in the hands of his sous-chef Jesse Koide.
