Dan Dan tacos, pupusas, gumbo: How restaurant staff break bread together for ‘family meal’ - The Dallas Morning News

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Andrew Chen of Monkey King Noodle Company knows something good is about to happen when he finds a stack of fresh tortillas in the refrigerator. They’re not a component for anything on the menu. The tortillas are clearly in the hopper for his staff’s family meal, the restaurant-provided, cooked-by-staff-and-eaten-together meal.

The family meal isn’t a sentimental act here — there’s no Netflix docu-series slow-mo. It’s just the kind of food that happens unceremoniously when you live almost every moment of your life with someone. It just is.

Chen is fine with the staff using Monkey King’s ingredients. Their Dan Dan dish is crumbled pork, wok-fried with plenty of garlic, ginger, handfuls of green onions, splashes of soy sauce, and house chili oil. Recently, one line cook added cilantro, green onions, and showers of lime and queso fresco into the mix. Piled onto fresh tortillas from the fridge, Dan Dan tacos were born. By some bloom of swift ingenuity, crumbled chicharrones (from El Rancho) got crushed up as a taco topping. Served and shared with everyone.

“Family meal is one of those rare cool things. ... I equate it to a drum circle,” Chen says.

(L to R) Monkey King Noodle Company Kitchen Manager Kristian Pena, Front of House manager Evan Mitzel and Operating Owner Andrew Chen at the Deep Ellum location (Brandon Wade / Special Contributor)

Employees stay longer these days, snaring double-shifts, so Chen’s seen more family meals than ever. He’ll find a fresh pot of coffee or slices of eggplant or queso fresco or crispy shells for tostadas — clues of a future staff meal together.

At Chen’s new Lakewood location, they’re expanding from the foundation of hand-pulled noodles, so the cooks will have rice to play with for family meal.

“No drum circle is the same, it’s whoever is bringing something to the table,” Chen says. “It’s based solely on who’s working.”

A plate of pupusas at Jose restaurant in Dallas, Tuesday, November 24, 2020. (Brandon Wade/Special Contributor)(Brandon Wade / Special Contributor)

José on Lovers

At José restaurant on Lovers Lane, most days the staff will order lunch straight from the menu. On weekends they do something a little different: Family meal starts with the “not it” game, wherein the initiated know to covertly place their finger on their nose. Whoever’s last to hit the finger-to-nose is in charge of that night’s family meal. A steaming cauldron of guiso or gorditas or rib-sticking enchiladas have been go-tos.

“It’s almost always fried rice,” executive chef Anastacia Quiñones-Pittman says with a laugh.

But then, there’s Rebecca Castillo, the grandmother with Mexican roots. José’s tortilla-maker is keenly familiar with cooking army-sized meals for her immediate family. “Our tortilla lady is always, hands-down, making the best family meal,” says Pittman. Pupusas, stuffed with cheese and beans, or chicharron-guiso, or chorizo, are kitchen legends.

Head Chef Anastacia Quinones Pittman of Jose restaurant with a plate of pupusas (Brandon Wade / Special Contributor)

TLC Vegan Kitchen

Every now and then, a dish made during a staff meal will eventually make the menu. Troy Gardner, owner and chef at TLC Vegan Kitchen in Garland, used to work at V-Eats in Trinity Groves. There, the leftover chicken fried “steak” was typically placed between buns and devoured during lunch, and it eventually had a turn on the V-Eats menu.

“The funny thing is, you start making stuff and staff post it to Instagram, and then people comment, like, ‘Why isn’t ramen on the menu?!” Gardner says.

The most common family meal at TLC now is centered around tacos: They’ll line a table with tortillas for fajitas or, even more popular, a mega pan of chilaquiles. Gardner’s staff has adapted to the bizarre climate by carrying their own personal tongs. Newbies are initiated through heat-level exposure to the TLC house salsa. (Gardner has a lot of habanero peppers on hand..

“One of the nice things with the restaurant industry is you’re already a big family lumped around food,” he says.

Kitchen to Kitchen

Cooking wasn’t always going to be Jada Glasby’s work. After graduating from the University of Florida, she became a tax accountant for Deloitte & Touche. She’d throw house parties and came to love the cooking that came with it — a flame that grew into her own catering company in California. Soon after, she attended culinary school in Napa, where she learned the joys that come with combining the Southern flavors that she grew up with in Atlanta and the sharpened umami of Asian cuisine. Ribs, lacquered with gochujang, dark maroon with red chiles, are one of her personal favorite creations. She likes to serve the spicy ribs with collard greens.

Glasby is currently operations manager at Kitchen to Kitchen, the restaurant group home base for Sweetbasil Thai Kitchen, Meatball Kitchen and Oddbird Kitchen. With three concepts flowing out of one central kitchen, the staff together-meal is key to morale. One cook is from New Mexico — he’ll smoke a pork butt, accompanied by plenty of hatch chile salsa. Glasby’s lead line cook is from New Orleans, and his specialty is a huge pot of gumbo.

One of Glasby’s favorites is a simple plate of fried chicken, intensely brittle from the Korean-style mixture of light-airy flours and a good deep fry, dabbed with a hot honey sauce.

“We’re really trying to treat everybody with respect,” she says. “We try to break bread with everybody.”

Ngon Vietnamese Kitchen

On Greenville Avenue, Ngon Vietnamese Kitchen owner Carol Nguyen adores sitting with her staff for family meal. Some Sundays, she’ll cook mega portions of their noodle bowls — their pho is a magic spell of slow-simmered beef broth with rice noodles — or caramelized and braised fish, or bun bo hue with thin vermicelli noodles.

“She likes to bring that togetherness that comes with family meal,” says Ngon manager Lyna Tran.

Tran has worked with Nguyen since they were both at Crazee Crab in Grand Prairie. The menu there is Cajun-themed, but Nguyen introduced the flavors of Vietnam to the staff. Every Sunday at the Crab, she would make hot bowls of pho. It was an elixir to anyone with a thumper of a hangover.

At Ngon, she cooks the kind of food she’d make at home. The same stuff Nguyen’s grandmother taught her to make.

“Her pho is just classic. I just need something warm in my belly,” Tran says. “We want it to feel like a second home.”

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