A restaurant specializing in authentic Chinese barbecue is coming to the Dallas area. Called Friendship BBQ, it's a casual Asian BBQ joint serving skewers, grilled oysters, and shellfish such as crab, crawfish, lobsters, and more.
The restaurant is opening in General Legacy Plaza, just west of US-75 at 240 Legacy Dr. #306 in Plano, in a space that has been home to a number of Indian restaurants including Iravat, Minerva, and Fork & Spoon.
A representative from the restaurant confirmed that it was coming, but did not specify an opening date.
Friendship BBQ was founded in 2017 in Flushing, New York, and is currently in franchise mode. A location is set to open in Houston soon, and other locations are already open in cities with big Chinese populations such as Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Seattle.
The concept was founded by Lei Chen, a native of China who has been working in the New York hospitality industry since 2005, and who also founded a similarly authentic sibling concept called Grill Master. The restaurants' websites are in both English and Chinese.
Chinese expats hail it as an authentic Chinese street-food experience, like teleporting to a nostalgic summer night, chattering at a little BBQ stand with street food and beer.
Visiting with a group and sharing a bunch of dishes is the way to go. Most locations keep late-night hours, some until 3 am, and the environment allows you to get as boisterous as you want.
You can order skewers or big platters of food, all to share, similar to tapas. Skewers include nearly anything you can thread on a stick, in options such as lamb, Wagyu, grilled quail, and squid. That also includes organ meats such as beef with tendon, pork belly, gizzards, chicken heart, chicken feet, kidney, pork intestines, beef tripe.
A selection of veggie skewers includes tofu skin, mushrooms, green beans, thinly sliced potato “chips”, whole ears of corn, garlic eggplant, and whole chile peppers.
Beyond the skewers, there are seafood boils, dan dan noodles, lamb ribs, fried chicken, grilled cabbage, chili soft tofu, and spicy corn in a bucket.
"Hot dishes" include pan-fried stinky tofu, stir-fried Chinese lettuce, stir-fried squid, and spicy clam; "cold dishes" include cucumber salad, spicy-sour vegetables, preserved egg with tofu, and jellyfish with vinegar.
There are also sausages and chicken wings. Gotta have wings.
