'Awesome" Is Ama-Zing
Lower East Side, NYC — Sometimes serendipity is indeed the best. I hear all kinds of food and restaurant ideas from friends, many of them viable and quite interesting. So when a friend told me about his long held idea of a restaurant or food truck that only served a variety of fried rice dishes, I was intrigued.
So much so that I decided to check (first) on Google to see if anyone else had indeed come up with this great idea. Someone had.
That someone is Zing Bai, who is the owner and creative mind and spirit behind Zing's Awesome Rice down on the Lower East Side.
On my second ever visit to Zing's Awesome Rice —just days after my first — I was able to sit down with Zing and find out exactly how Beijing native and cum laude Cornell Law School graduate Heijing "Zing" Bai went from being a derivatives and securities finance lawyer to slinging her version of her father's fried rice dish in the heart of New York City's still rather "lo-fi" Lower East Side.
As I ask just a few questions while letting her answer fully, Zing is gracious, warm, direct, stylish, and speaks with controlled yet genuine passion.
KAC Food: So, How did Zing's Awesome Rice come to be?
ZING: I grew up eating one of the popular dishes in my family, my dad's fried rice. He did it in a oily [fashion], but it was still delicious. While I was working in a law firm, I noticed that many of my colleagues had an issue with corporate group lunches, because every group lunch ordered pizza, pasta, and the like. These people had an allergy to gluten.
“No one was ordering food for those gluten-free folk. So that led me to think how rice culture is not being fully appreciated or introduced to the mainstream market.”
ZING (cont.): Now people are more aware of vegetarianism, dietary restrictions, vegan, culture food. But no one was ordering food for those gluten-free folk. So that led me to think how rice culture is not being fully appreciated or fully introduced to the market in North America.
Rice is a very fundamental grain. In Africa, Asia, South America, everywhere, rice is a very important agricultural product. There are so many different varieties of rice. Different regions, different seeds, different weather. Different types of textures and tastes. So I thought if I could introduced the idea of rice-based healthy diet to the market, it would be a socially beneficial thing — a good thing — to do.
And I now how to cook rice, which helps.
KAC Food: It Does Help, indeed. What else in your dishes besides the rice do your feature as your healthy ingredients?
ZING: I based them off of my dad's ingredients but switch up a couple of things. For example I use extra virgin olive oil, and just a touch of it, to reduce the calorie count of the dish. Also I steam the sausage before cooking to give rid of excess oil. We grill the chicken and bacon in-house to reduce the calories without hurting the taste of the dish. Our house "secret" sauce is healthy and absolutely gluten-free so that people who are so sensitive to gluten that they can't even touch soy sauce, can have our sauce.
So this is how it all started, I was so crazy about this idea that I quit my law firm job to do this.
KAC Food: How did you come up with the rice recipe(s) you offer here on the menu?
ZING: If it's a customers first time here we usually recommend our original recipe, which is the Cantonese sausage seared rice as it is rare to find the Cantonese sausage in a fried rice dish that's far more northern Chinese (Beijing, Shanghai). I like to describe that as a Cantonese-Beijing fusion dish.
So it started from there — that recipe that I actually come up with when I was in college in Hawaii. Growing up in Beijing in the 80s, we didn't even know that Cantonese sausage existed. When I was in college in Honolulu [Hawaii Pacific University], I would visit the Honolulu Chinatown, where a majority of the vendors were Cantonese vendors. It was an eye-opening experience for me; I would visit different markets and butcher shops, and that's where I discovered Cantonese sausage and how they used that in much of their cooking. It's a very lean meat, not too starchy. It's sweet, savory, smoky; it's very very interesting.
So I started to think how can I incorporate the sausage into my most loved dish, fried rice. So I experimented with steaming the sausage and cooking in less oil, and that's how I cam up with my first dish. Then I used chicken, because who doesn't like chicken? Then I use baby shrimp for people who like seafood.
For vegan folks I use smoked tofu, which you can't usually find in western supermarkets. Not too many people are aware of this dried smoked, five-spice tofu, which I want to introduce to the mass market. It's like steak — firm — and it being smoked means it's packed with flavor and is a good equivalent for the sausage for the vegan folks.
Then we offer a bacon seared rice dish as well, for the bacon fans, and then we offer a "surprise" seared rice, which we can rotate occasionally or seasonally. Like right now it's spring, so we're featuring whitefish.
Zing's knowledge and research of rice informs her passion and culinary creative decisions, as is evidenced in the video below:
And the menu doesn't stop at just rice dishes, one of which Zing herself was gracious enough to prepare for me. The menu offers a small variety of apps as well; I chose to enjoy an appetizer of quail eggs & olives skewers, and a light, refreshing, yet richly layered (non-dairy) tomato coconut cream bisque.
Rice, however, is obviously the star, at this little one-table restaurant, and I can't wait to get back and try the spam seared rice (paying homage to her college years in Hawaii), and the mochi seared rice dessert that one of her chefs was inspired to create.
And inspiration is ultimately what created this concept, is what motivated someone to give up their law career to pursue this business, and is what makes the dishes that come out of Zing's Awesome Rice's kitchen delicious.
And what should — and probably will — be the reason why more and more diners will head down to Ludlow street repeatedly for their rice edification and education.
•••····
Zing's Awesome Rice | 122 Ludlow Street, NYC | (212) 253-5808 | zingsawesomerice.com
