Inspired By Her Travels, Shirley Chung Tries Out Taiwanese Brunch in LA

Los Angeles dumpling queen Shirley Chung, known for her Top Chef-famous jumbo cheeseburger potstickers and the other new-school Chinese-American comfort food she serves at Culver City’s Ms. Chi, recently visited Taiwan and got some delicious ideas for her restaurant. For a chef like Chung, a lot of inspiration emerges when you wake up really early in the morning and go looking for food in Taipei.

“I am going to run scallion pancake with egg because I miss Taiwanese breakfast already,” says Chung, who spent nine days in Taiwan (primarily in Taipei) and returned to Los Angeles in early July.

Chung (a Beijing native with extensive fine-dining experience who’s decided to take a more casual route after working for culinary powerhouses like Thomas Keller, Guy Savoy and José Andrés) will try out her egg-laden scallion pancakes at Ms. Chi’s Taiwanese brunch pop-up this weekend. On Saturday, July 22 (from noon to 4 p.m.) and Sunday, July 23 (from noon to 3 p.m.), Ms. Chi will also serve bacon-and-egg scallion pancake sandwiches, sheng jian bao (pan-fried buns with either pork or chicken), meat pies with pork and smashed cucumbers.

Chung is a resourceful chef who is always looking to create new items and revenue opportunities like mochi donuts and the nationwide shipping she does via Goldbelly (where she is the foremost dumpling slinger). So if this weekend’s brunch pop-up does well, you can expect to see many of these Taiwanese dishes again at Ms. Chi. Chung is thinking about the possibility of serving Taiwanese breakfast all day after absorbing herself in Taipei’s can’t-stop won’t stop dining culture.

“I was surrounded by 24 hours of food,” she says during an interview.

Chung and her husband/business partner Jimmy Li arrived in Taipei on a Friday. Jet-lagged, they woke up at 5 a.m. the next morning and marveled out how popular breakfast spots were open at 6 a.m. with a line out the door. The beautiful flavors and aromas of pan-fried pork buns, savory soybean milk and other Taiwanese breakfast staples powered their trip. And breakfast for dinner works nicely in Taipei, too.

“Taiwan has a lot of breakfast you can get all day and all night,” Chung says.

Beyond breakfast, Chung also devoured classic Taiwanese dishes like pork chop over rice in Taipei.

Ms. Chi’s regular menu, of course, already has Taiwanese influences in dishes like its fried pork cutlet and lu rou mein with thick egg noodles and a pork ragu.

Chung also recently launched a happy hour menu (4 to 6 p.m. on Wednesday-Friday) with $6 food including lion’s head meatballs and dumplings including her popular chicken jiaozi, pork potstickers and vegan garden dumplings along with mala chicken tenders and salt-and-pepper tots.

Chung, who supplies wholesale dumplings to festivals and chef friends, is also looking around Los Angeles for locations that could be home to a dumpling-focused restaurant. That’s part of an overall dumpling-domination strategy with plans to create mass quantities of potstickers and baos for both restaurants and retail.