A week after the softest of soft openings (there wasn’t even a phone number to call on the menu posted in the storefront window), chef Phillip Tang of new Inman Square spot
East by Northeast (1128 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, 617.876.0286) was almost too busy to talk. A whole pig was set to arrive the next day from a Vermont farm, and there was
man tou dough to mix for the crispy pork belly that would result, not to mention plenty of thick noodles to roll. With word getting out about his food, there isn’t much downtime in sight for the chef. At 27, Tang seems to be at a perfect age for a hot young chef to open his first restaurant — he’s got bubbling vats of energy and enough culinary experience to be seasoned but not overcooked.
The buzz is that the concept is “Momofuku comes to Boston." Is that a fair description? Hey, if it gets people in the door, it’s nice company to keep! I think of my food as traditional Chinese home cooking — cozy, comforting food like noodles and dumplings, but not traditional Chinese restaurant cooking, not a place where people call up for beef and broccoli in a takeout container to heat up at home. I think of us as “modern Chinese” with top-quality ingredients. Like our smoked pork meatball soup with homemade noodles — it’s a little sweet, a little sour, a little salty. Or our pork belly buns, and our hand-rolled short rice noodles with chicken and shitake and sweet bean paste. The kind of things you might eat at home if you came from a Chinese restaurant family.
So, are you from a Chinese restaurant family? I don’t think of myself as coming from a restaurant family. My mom worked for the World Bank and my father was an architect in DC, but when I was in high school, they opened two restaurants in Maryland to help my uncle expand his restaurant business on the West Coast. My granduncle had four restaurants in Taiwan, and before that, my grandfather had restaurants in Taiwan too — a great chef in his own right! Many of the recipes at East by Northeast are family recipes with my own spin on them.
Were you programmed to be a chef? No. Though I always cooked at home, it never occurred to me that I could have a future as a chef until I went to college to study East Asian Studies and Studio Art and started working part-time in restaurants. After college, I went to cooking school in DC, and then came to Boston and worked at Lumière, T.W. Food, and Hungry Mother. I started planning East by Northeast two years ago, but I waited a year when the economy went south instead.
What was the worst moment of the opening? Construction is always a surprise. One day during construction, I walked in and heard water running in the basement, and I thought, “That’s weird — I don’t even have a sink down there.” The water heater had burst, and there was a river of water running through the building.
What’s with the whole pig fixation? Pork is our main protein in China, except for western China, where they have a lot of dishes with lamb. I love the technical part of butchering, dealing with a whole animal, the full circle, and figuring out how to use every part. Last week, I used my pig’s ears in a salad — a pig’s ear terrine. Not super popular, but the people who loved it loved it a lot.
— Louisa Kasdon
Louisa Kasdon can be reached at louisa@louisakasdon.com.
