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Family of 'Noodle King' Shorty Tang Opening New Chelsea Eatery

By Maya Rajamani | August 31, 2016 5:55pm | Updated on September 2, 2016 5:10pm
 The Shorty Tang Noodles facade at 98 Eighth Ave.
The Shorty Tang Noodles facade at 98 Eighth Ave.
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DNAinfo/Maya Rajamani

CHELSEA — The family of a chef once hailed as the city’s “sesame noodle king” is bringing his popular dishes to Eighth Avenue.

New, home-style Chinese restaurant Shorty Tang Noodles will serve the eponymous chef’s cold sesame noodles when the eatery opens at 98 Eighth Ave. at the corner of West 15th Street this fall, manager James Tang said.

Publications including the New York Times have credited Shorty Tang — James's grandfather — with developing the dish New Yorkers of the 1970s and '80s think of when they hear the phrase “cold sesame noodles.”

“The noodle shop [will be] a continuation of the family’s legacy,” James Tang said on Tuesday. “Legend has it that Shorty Tang brought the cold sesame noodle to the United States.”

The chef's original noodles will be on the eatery’s menu, along with dishes like braised beef noodle soup — a Tang family classic — and noodles with pesto sauce, shrimp, calamari and mussels described as an “Italian Chinese marriage.”

“The recipes haven’t been changed, to my knowledge, since my grandfather got to the states about 50 years ago,” James Tang said.

Shorty Tang and his family opened the renowned Hwa Yuan Sichuan Inn in Chinatown in 1968, which operated until after the chef's death in the 1980s, his grandson said.

James Tang's grandmother also ran Chinese restaurants in Queens until her death nearly five years ago, and his cousins recently operated a noodle stand named after their grandfather at Smorgasburg.

James Tang's father, professional chef Chen Lieh Tang, ran dozens of his own restaurants in Manhattan and New Jersey over the years, but got out of the business when the financial crisis hit.

The new Eighth Avenue shop will mark his father's return, James Tang said.

“He wants to make this his legacy,” he explained. “From my dad’s point of view… there’s no good Chinese food left in New York, at least in the traditional sense.”

James Tang and his father also hope to resurrect Hwa Yuan at its former location, which has been vacant since the Bank of China relocated from that address to Flushing, he added.

That eatery will be “a very, very high-end restaurant,” but Shorty Tang Noodles will have a casual atmosphere, with six tables and a countertop bar, James Tang said.

“I think it will be stupendous,” he noted. “Some older New Yorkers might recognize some of the tastes, but it might be new to some New Yorkers.”