Lisa Ling on why Asian food in Los Angeles matters.
A black cod goes from the Pacific to Shibumi.
Keeping cool when the kitchen gets hot.
One restaurant’s many pandemic pivots.
Two different takes on Indian food.
Every day’s a hustle at Woon.
From Asian farms to Los Angeles restaurants.
Why in L.A. they’re not boring.
Three restaurants breaking boundaries.
Mastering values at Yang’s Kitchen.
Two chefs go behind the blade.
Omakase and ramen join the neighborhood.
The coronation of soju and makgeolli.
Three women open the bar they want to walk into.
Indonesian community through cuisine.
On working with Mom and Dad at Anajak Thai.
Los Angeles before sushi.
Inside the staff ritual of eating together.
Three Vietnamese restaurants expand the city’s palate.
One chef has some thoughts.
Waking up Los Angeles to Burmese cuisine.
The couple behind Shiku goes with the flow.
An ode to those who keep them going.
Michelle Bernstein embraces the competition.
One restaurant’s epic journey from debt to success.
The couple behind Boia De and Walrus Rodeo play by their own rules.
Vermouth gets a bar of its own.
On the business of BBQ in Miami.
Recipes for navigating an uncertain economy.
The secret to never getting old in a town obsessed with what’s new.
How two pioneers of omakase introduced Miami to a new way of dining out.
Chasing a childhood memory one arepa at a time.
Why Miami’s mainstays of Middle Eastern food aren’t phased by the influx of glossy newcomers.
David Foulquier on his shapeshifting ambitions.
The Black chefs behind a vegan movement in Miami.
Two Cuban sandwich masters talk shop.
A new generation’s take on the classic Jewish deli.
Miami’s mavericks of sustainable growing and dining.
An intimate glimpse inside restaurants after the last customer leaves.
Creating a culture where employees stick around.
A new kind of bottle service takes root in Miami.
The art of staying put in a changing city.
The city’s ventanitas created a culture all their own.
Philadelphia Magazine’s food critic on the irrepressible attitude that is the key ingredient of the city’s restaurants.
How one restaurant gave birth to many.
The cheesesteak may be the global mascot of Philly. But a contingent of pioneering chefs and restaurateurs have made the city a hub of vegetarian innovation.
The city’s Eritrean-Ethiopian restaurants serve up more—way more—than delicious food.
How Juan Carlos Aparicio baked his way to running a restaurant (that isn’t a bakery).
How Alex Tewfik went from being a food editor in Philly to owning one of the best restaurants in town.
Two restaurants that share a belief in how cooking can be force for change.
How Chutatip Suntaranon channeled her upbringing in Thailand—and life spent flying around the world—into one of Philly’s most singular restaurants.
Stopping by the warehouses in Kensington where artisan upstarts are breathing new life into the city’s food scene.
The Ongoing Evolution of Philly’s Classic Sandwiches.
Chloé Grigri, Amanda Shulman, and Ellen Yin on upending the rules of the game.
Mike Solomonov takes stock of his journey.
When a customer becomes a friend.
Ange Branca was forced to close her beloved restaurant in 2020. That was just the beginning.
How do you build a restaurant in a space that was never meant for a restaurant? In Philly, a city of Revolutionary Warera buildings and colonial row houses and ancient warehouses, it can be a bit like playing Tetris with Benjamin Franklin.
Three Philly couples get frank and intimate in sharing their recipes for romance.
Inside the world of homespun pop-ups and unexpected collaborations that have made Philly’s dining scene like nowhere else.
The classics are easy enough to master by anyone with fine liquor and a recipe.
The city has long been a vibrant hub of Vietnamese food. Today, a new generation is striking a balance all their own—between creativity and tradition, innovation and memory.
An ode to the unsung heroes of restaurant kitchens from a comedy writer who couldn’t take the heat.
A cell phone has been invented that allows you to send one text message to your younger self. What do you write?
How Ryan Wong turned his one restaurant, Needle, into many over the course of three fraught and unpredictable years.
At the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Hyperion Avenue, in Silver Lake, the word Needle curves along a bright green awning in white cursive lettering. One might not guess that this corner has become a go-to destination for modern Cantonese cooking, but that’s just what’s in store at Chef Ryan Wong’s innovative restaurant, where the small dining room and patio teem nightly with diners eager to taste his creations.
Wong has transformed Needle several times since opening in 2019, reinventing and reimagining the original concept, flirting with both casual and fine dining, to adapt to the pandemic. A timeline of his pivots and pirouettes showcases what a chef can learn while facing the impossible and attempting to keep an independent business afloat.
Wong, who formerly worked alongside Michael Voltaggio at Ink, Ludo Lefebvre at Trois Mec, and with Tim Hollingsworth at Otium, opened in October of 2019 with a small plates concept, with dishes between four dollars and $30. He worked to perfect his now soughtafter char siu pork shoulder, plating it as if being presented to royalty. “That came from working in fine dining for my whole career,” says Wong. “I just can’t shake it.” He also introduced a dish popular in Hong Kong and Macau, a pork chop bun, and served white cut chicken with ginger scallion sauce; cold tofu, mushrooms, and fried eggplant balanced out the menu. Customers quickly flocked to the small storefront for beautiful, technique-driven plates with soulful flavors.
“When the pandemic first began, I thought that would be the end of Needle,” says Wong. After being closed for two months following the shutdown in March 2020, Wong revamped with a to-go menu of rice plates that he cooked alone in the kitchen, counting on his wife, Karen Wong, to help and pack orders. “It was something that people could take home and eat right away or keep in their fridge and reheat later,” explains Wong. “We made a tofu fried rice, a pork chop fried rice, and chicken steak rice with black pepper sauce.” The Wongs were in survival mode until they felt ready to bring back most of the original Needle menu for take-out.
“Not being able to have indoor dining, I wanted to foster that connection with our guests that we were missing, so I thought, Why not bring the cooking outside?”
Wong then decided to plan a menu of grilled skewers inspired by his days in Hong Kong, where he staged at a few restaurants. “Not being able to have indoor dining, I wanted to foster that connection with our guests that we were missing, so I thought, Why not bring the cooking outside?” He started a pop-up every other Tuesday, called Siu Yeh, where he fired up a Japanese-style konro grill and began to cook up creative skewers: a pork jowl with black bean sauce, oyster mushroom with spicy salt, Cherng fun with sesame and hoisin, and pork meatball inspired by Japanese tsukune. Eventually Wong added congee, soy sauce chicken wings, and a few fried items.
When another wave of Covid arrived in the spring of 2021, Wong closed the patio and came up with a bold new plan: an 11-course tasting menu for one table a night for six to eight guests, at $120 a person. “I wanted it to be more of a feast,” says Wong, who was inspired by the Cantonesestyle banquet meals typically served at weddings. “The focus was a little more seafood heavy, like lobster with noodles with ginger and scallion. Being able to have free reign and use ingredients that are a little more expensive was fun.” This menu was served four nights a week for five months. “We were doing take-out at the same time,” he explains. “It was kind of rough to manage both.”
“We then pivoted to a Siu Yeh tasting menu with the skewers,” says Wong, explaining the shift as a response to the pandemic easing and wanting to serve a larger number of customers. Wong created a set menu for $98 a person of ten skewers, including a curry octopus and black cod with sweet and sour papaya. Five snacks, like winter melon soup with dried scallop, were offered as palate cleansers. They served this menu at Needle until the early arrival of the Wongs’ first baby, on Christmas day of 2021. The new addition to their family prompted another break.
When home with their newborn, Wong thought about how he wanted to do things going forward. “We were really concerned about our baby’s health with Covid still being a thing,” he says, explaining the decision to revert back to take-out, this time with a Hong Kong-style café menu: pork chop rice, chicken steak rice, baked seafood pasta. Wong knew he couldn’t return to a more complicated menu or serving diners on the premises until they hired more servers.
By March of 2022, they had staffed up and launched the current menu, which in ways is a mashup of all past incarnations. At prices similar to when they opened, Wong now offers a series of skewers a la carte: curry shrimp, ginger scallion chicken, pork meatball and sugar snap peas with lemon. There is a stir-fried udon dish and ong choy with fermented bean curd. The cold tofu is back, along with a pork jowl char siu. Wong’s passion for cooking—and for Hong Kong’s flavors—comes through in every bite. “It’s hard to change a concept and get people to buy into it and accept it,” he says. “Our customers have followed us along the way and it has been amazing.”
Sign up for notifications about future issues