Xi'an Famous Foods

Xi'an Famous Foods
Private
Founder Jason Wang
Headquarters New York, New York, United States
Number of locations
 9 (2015)
Products A Selection of the Street Foods of Xi'an, China
Website http://www.xianfoods.com/

Xi'an Famous Foods (西安名吃) is a fast casual restaurant based in New York City that serves authentic Northern Chinese dishes. Xi’an Famous Foods, a family-run business with no outside investors, is currently located in different areas of New York City and serves the cuisine of Xi’an. Since its founding in 2005, Xi’an Famous Foods has gained much popularity. It has been featured in many television shows, such as the Cooking Channel’s Food(ography), Kelly Choi’s Eat Out New York, and Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations.[1] It has also appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and many more. As of 2015, Xi’an Famous Foods has nine stores that span Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan.

History

Jason Wang serves as the company’s CEO and president. He and his family come from Xi’an, one of the oldest cities in China with more than 3100 years of history. Born in Xi’an, Wang reminisces about the food that his grandfather cooked when he was young. Like most Chinese families, Wang’s family gathered on holidays to prepare a feast, often featuring Xi’an specialties like “Pao-Mo” and steamed buns soaked in a rich lamb soup.[2] Once Wang and his family moved to the U.S., the yearning for home flavors inspired Wang and his father to make dishes with his grandfather’s secret sauce recipes.[3] They felt that there were people like themselves who missed the cuisine of their hometown.

Before Xi’an Famous Foods existed, Jason Wang’s father started a bubble tea shop, which sold food on the side, in Flushing, Queens. Meanwhile, Wang was in college at Washington University in St. Louis, but came home during breaks to help his father in the shop.[4] They soon realized that their food sold better than their beverages, so in late 2005, they moved their shop to the basement of Flushing’s Golden Shopping Mall and called it Xi’an Famous Foods.[5]

After Wang graduated in 2009 with a bachelor’s degree in business, he worked in corporate for a short time, but then decided to focus on co-founding his family food business with his father. From that moment, Wang and his father continued expanding their food business to Manhattan and Brooklyn, opening eight more shops.[6] Wang and his father made and sold their homemade noodles and lamb burgers, offering a taste of home to their own ethnic community. “We’re going to keep it pure, because that’s what people are coming to us for,” Wang told the New York Times.[7]

Menu

Xi’an Famous Foods’ menu consist of cold noodles, burgers, soups, hand-ripped noodles, cold dishes, and other specialties. While many of Xi’an Famous Foods’ dishes are spicy, a good amount of them allow the customer to decide the level of spiciness, ranging from not spicy to very spicy. Most dishes are prepped in the kitchen and the noodles are hand-pulled in the shop. With over 30 different dishes, Xi’an Famous Foods maintains quite a variety for its customers. Each shop also sells a variety of homemade teas (Jasmine, Chrysanthemum, and Sour Hawberry) and sodas. The teas prepacked and branded.

Operations

Storefront on Saint Marks Place

In late 2005, the original Xi’an Famous Foods opened in the basement of the Golden Mall in Flushing, Queens. In August 2009, two more shops opened, one in Flushing and one on East Broadway, but were both closed due to their limited space and facilities not conducive to the growing operations. In 2010, Xi’an Famous Foods brought their authentic Xi’an cuisine to Manhattan in the East Village on St. Marks Place. Following its success, another shop opened in Chinatown ten months later. The company continued to expand rapidly, opening four more shops in Manhattan, one in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and a restaurant called Biang! in Flushing. Xi’an Famous Foods plans on expanding its food empire along the east coast within the next five years.[8]

Cultural Influence

Xi’an Famous Foods was the first shop to bring Xi’an cuisine to the United States.[9] Located in New York City, it caters not only to Chinese people, but also to people of all backgrounds. Jason Wang made it his goal to differentiate his shop from Chinese restaurants, which tend to remain in the niche market of the Chinese community. “[Chinese] people always think Chinatown is the world,” Wang points out. “Everyone is focused on how we compete in Chinatown as a microcosm…with those ‘northerners or southerners,’ not really how we compete in the U.S. with other types of restaurants.”[10] With its menu translated into English, Xi’an Famous Foods is accessible to everyone.

Not only has Xi’an Famous Foods been praised by the press and television personalities Anthony Bourdain, Bobby Flay, and Andrew Zimmern, but it has also grasped the attention of its hometown in China.[11] The company became an ambassador of its hometown food, while still retaining the identity of an American-born business. Xi’an Famous Foods has introduced America to the unique cuisine of its hometown: liangpi “cold skin” noodles, lamb Pao-Mo soup, and wide hand-ripped “biang biang” noodles. None of these dishes were popular in the U.S. prior to Xi’an Famous Foods’ creation. It has furthermore spawned hype on the term ‘Xi’an’.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Shao, Heng (July 30, 2013). "The Phenomenon Of Xi'an Famous Foods In New York City". Forbes. Retrieved August 27, 2015.
  2. ↑ Shao, Heng (July 30, 2013). "The Phenomenon Of Xi'an Famous Foods In New York City". Forbes. Retrieved August 27, 2015.
  3. ↑ Stern, Steven (June 7, 2011). "Based on an Old Family Recipe". The New York Times. Retrieved August 27, 2015.
  4. ↑ Yablon, Alex (September 29, 2013). "Boom Brands 2013: Xi'an Famous Foods". New York Magazine. Retrieved August 27, 2015.
  5. ↑ Shao, Heng (July 30, 2013). "The Phenomenon Of Xi'an Famous Foods In New York City". Forbes. Retrieved August 27, 2015.
  6. ↑ Reddy, Sumathi (December 29, 2010). "Using Its Noodle, Xi'an Expands". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved August 27, 2015.
  7. ↑ Stern, Steven (June 7, 2011). "Based on an Old Family Recipe". The New York Times. Retrieved August 27, 2015.
  8. ↑ Strehlke, Sade (January 27, 2015). "Anthony Bourdain Boosts Xi’an Famous Foods". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved August 27, 2015.
  9. ↑ Shao, Heng (July 30, 2013). "The Phenomenon Of Xi'an Famous Foods In New York City". Forbes. Retrieved August 27, 2015.
  10. ↑ Shao, Heng (July 30, 2013). "The Phenomenon Of Xi'an Famous Foods In New York City". Forbes. Retrieved August 27, 2015.
  11. ↑ Shao, Heng (July 30, 2013). "The Phenomenon Of Xi'an Famous Foods In New York City". Forbes. Retrieved August 27, 2015.
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