At Queen’s English, Beard-nominated chef Henji Cheung draws on his background in the former British territory of Hong Kong to fuse Asian ingredients with European techniques — and vice versa. The restaurant’s “prep heavy, service fast” approach means that Henji and his team can turn 150 covers out of a tiny 38-seat space each night, serving diners a combination of traditional dishes, techniques inspired by his family’s homecooking, and inventive takes on the cuisine like daikon fritters, truffle dumplings, and more.
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00:00Queen's English is the only Cantonese restaurant in DC.
00:05What we do here is like an East meets West cuisine.
00:08The East is obviously my background coming from Hong Kong.
00:11Also, the West is also my background growing up in Hong Kong as a British territory.
00:16You know, people always ask, how do you explain your restaurant?
00:20We cook with Asian ingredients but with European techniques and vice versa.
00:24That's what I grew up on, you know, is like I was taught the Queen's English.
00:30It's 10 o'clock in the morning now.
00:34We're going to start prepping our clay pot rabbit dish.
00:36This is something that we start early in the morning because it can take a few hours to cook.
00:40So we're going to just quarter the rabbit for easier cooking.
00:43Because this is a braised dish, the butchering technique does not need to be precise.
00:47We get our rabbit from Spain.
00:49I'm sure they're sourcing for good rabbit here in the States.
00:52I just have not been able to find it.
00:54And it's also is not that popular of a protein here in America.
00:58We also need to understand like this is something that is eaten in other culture.
01:02We ate them all the time.
01:03We should be able to explore other options to just, you know, chicken, meat and pork.
01:09After we separate all the rabbit, we roast our two mirepoix.
01:13So we have the Chinese mirepoix, we call the Holy Trinity.
01:16It's ginger garlic scallion.
01:18And then we have the European mirepoix, which is carrot, celery, onion.
01:24You know, if you have like a nice stove, it's like maybe like 20, 30,000 BTU.
01:28This thing is 175,000 BTU.
01:31Sounds like a jet engine, you know.
01:33That's the premise of a lot of Asian Hong Kong cuisine.
01:35High heat, we call it wok hei, right?
01:37The breath of the dragon.
01:39At our home in Hong Kong, that's the size of wok that my grandparents had.
01:44We could cook a family of four or a family of 40 with that wok.
01:48That big wok for sure is my favorite piece of equipment.
01:51Where else are you going to get to cook on 170,000 BTUs, right?
01:55Next we're going to combine all our rabbit with the mirepoix that we roasted off earlier.
02:01We're going to keep it on, put it on the bottom just to prevent the rabbit from burning on the bottom of the pot.
02:07And then I like to lay the legs on.
02:10So this is just Shaoxing wine.
02:12We use this like the French use the red wine in braising, you know.
02:15So we're just going to wrap that up and then we're going to stick this baby in the oven and see it in a few hours.
02:22Now we're going to make our top selling item, the truffle dumpling.
02:26We have shell edamame.
02:28We have some fresh tofu.
02:29This was literally dropping my front doorstep at 630 this morning.
02:32What happens in this dish is we're going to cook the tofu, the shallot and edamame with a little bit of butter.
02:37And then we have a truffle sauce and we're going to combine it all together with the filling.
02:41And then now we're going to season it.
02:43This is our koji.
02:45And then here is our truffle sauce.
02:47Incorporating truffle in the dumpling is, you know, seems so odd, but truffle in the ravioli is not uncommon.
02:52But then when people are like, how'd you come up with a truffle dumpling?
02:54You're like, it's not that much different from the truffle ravioli you eat in an Italian fresh restaurant.
02:58You know, but you'll be surprised how much, especially French restaurants uses Japanese ingredients.
03:04Anybody want to taste?
03:05So, you know, the food is very mixed up.
03:08Kind of like how my background was mixed up and a lot of influences where, you know, I grew up in New York.
03:13I have a lot of experience in like an Italian and French restaurant.
03:15However, my foundation has always been Chinese.
03:18We're going to start wrapping our dumpling.
03:19But first, I want to introduce Juan.
03:21My left hand, my right hand.
03:22This restaurant will not work without him.
03:24We're going to put water on two sides of the dumplings wrapper.
03:27We're going to fold it over corner to corner and then touch the wet with the dry side.
03:31Pinch it, flatten it out just to make sure you squeeze all the air pocket out of it.
03:35Because we don't want it to explode when we're pan searing it.
03:38And we have this little shape.
03:39Kind of like a little handkerchief, you know.
03:41Come, what's put in your pocket.
03:42Each tray is about how many orders?
03:44300 pieces.
03:45So 900 pieces a week.
03:47Yeah, I could confidently say this is one dish that we sell the most.
03:51Yeah, we definitely felt like we needed a dumpling to tie in the whole theme of the restaurant.
03:55It makes sense to people, you know.
03:57From the north to the south, west to the east, there's thousands of variations of some form of dumpling.
04:02And this is Washington DC form of dumpling here in America.
04:05The whole dish is very soft right now.
04:08So we want to add another layer of texture to the dish.
04:10That's why we're going to pan fry it and get the skin part really crispy.
04:15In Chinese, we call it a wall teeth.
04:17Wall teeth basically is the name of any steamed dumpling pan fried.
04:21I'm going to grab the plate and we're just going to start getting ready to start plating our dumpling.
04:25And these are actually very interesting plates.
04:27We found them in a basement shop in Chinatown in New York.
04:30These are all from old Chinese restaurant from like the 40s, 50s and the 60s.
04:35So for plating of the dish, we're going to put the four dumplings in the plate.
04:39And then one of three sauces.
04:42So first we're going to put the truffle sauce, which is the truffle sauce we had earlier.
04:46And then we add, this is saba.
04:49It's grape musk that I bought in from Italy.
04:52And then the last, corn espuma.
04:54It's just like a sweet corn cream puree.
04:56And then the espuma part really just like lighten up the sauce.
05:00It's always so good.
05:01That's part of the job.
05:03So we opened Queen's English in April 2019 with my partner and my wife, Sarah Thompson.
05:10So we're going to start the daikon fritter dish, which my wife actually invented for the restaurant.
05:15First step is we're going to quarter these daikon.
05:18I'm familiar with this dish because it's a vegetable that my grandma actually grew on her farm.
05:23We actually wanted to open this restaurant in New York.
05:26Did not need another Cantonese restaurant.
05:28So we decided to come to Washington DC.
05:30We had this restaurant for about seven years now.
05:33And it's been a hell of a ride.
05:36I grew up not around dim sum at all.
05:38So when I started going out with Angie's family and eating dim sum every weekend,
05:43I just kind of said, where have these dishes been all my life?
05:47Oh, the first time Sarah bought this dish and we made it together, I thought it was wonderful.
05:52It is basically what Queen's English is and what we want it to be.
05:58Okay, so this is the daikon.
06:02This is after it's all shredded.
06:04It takes about 45 to 50 minutes for this, the whole pot to actually cook down.
06:09So what we're going to do now is we're going to prepare the stuff that actually goes in the daikon mix.
06:13So we have here some dry shiitake mushroom that's been soaking in warm water overnight.
06:19So the ingredient that's going inside the dish is not really traditional.
06:24So a traditional daikon is actually made with lard.
06:28But nobody really put shiitake, baby shrimp and all that stuff that we're putting in it right now.
06:33So we do change our menu consistently since day one, the daikon hasn't changed.
06:38So that's another signature dish we have that we just go through a lot of.
06:42As much as I love this dish, but it's so labor intensive.
06:46After the pandemic, we're like, let's just not put it back on the menu.
06:50Within the first week, I think every of our guests email and ask the same question.
06:55Where is the daikon fritter?
06:56So ever since then, we were not able to take this dish off the menu.
07:01Okay, so now we're going to finish off the daikon.
07:03We have the daikon that's been boiled off.
07:05We're going to add the vegetables that we cut earlier.
07:07Dry baby shrimp.
07:08We have a little bit of cornstarch and some rice flour.
07:11This will help with all the moisture that we have from the daikon.
07:15And we're just going to mix this up.
07:16So you kind of make it into like a paste that seems about right.
07:19They typically make it in like a bigger steamer tray.
07:22Due to our restaurant size, we make a smaller steaming version of it.
07:26Nice and even, nice and flat.
07:28And then you put this in our giant steamer.
07:31So it's been 45 minutes, it's been steaming.
07:34And it just looks like that when it comes out steamed.
07:37So now that it's out the steamer, double cooked, cooled down.
07:42We're just going to trim it into portion.
07:44And then we're going to panseer them.
07:46So the daikon, you know, up in this part, this was pretty traditional.
07:49And even with this part, the oyster sauce, this is the sauce that you typically serve a daikon fritter with when you go eat dim sum.
07:55And then what we like to do is we also add a little bit of QB mayo on it.
07:59And then we garnish with something called pork sung or pork floss.
08:03So it's dry shredded pork.
08:05And then finally, a little bit more scallion on top.
08:09So this is our daikon fritter dish here at Queen's English.
08:16Yeah, so right now it's five past five.
08:18We're getting ready for service in about 20 minutes.
08:21Everybody's all set up ready.
08:22We're cleaning the line.
08:23And then everybody just getting hustling to finish up the last thing they need.
08:27Get the station set up and wait for our first guest to walk through the door.
08:30As you can see, it's a very small space.
08:32But we're working, you know, we're working what we have and efficiency over speed here.
08:37We're a small restaurant with 38 seats.
08:39But we'll do 150 covers out of 38 seat restaurant.
08:44Because of the logistic of how small this space is, it literally when you're dining at Queen's English, it feels like you're sitting in the kitchen.
08:50Because of the way Chinese food is structured and the way the kitchen is structured, it's prep heavy, service fast.
08:58So we spend a lot of our time and energy prepping the food and having everything ready.
09:03And then during service, it's fast.
09:06Okay, so now we are on to our crispy whole bronzino dish.
09:10These are the bronzino that we get in.
09:12They're scale and gutted.
09:13And then right now what we're going to do is we're going to butterfly the fish.
09:16And then once the fish is prepared, we make our sauce.
09:19So we get a handful of Napa cabbage, garlic, our Hong Kong chili sauce.
09:24This part of the sauce is actually a little kind of important.
09:27So because of the wok is so hot.
09:29And then we like to stir the sauce around.
09:31So the caramelization happens around the rim of the sauce.
09:34And it really darkens up the sauce and like really thicken it up.
09:38The Napa cabbage is nicely charred.
09:40There's so much going on with the fish already, you know, with the frying, the spice, the chili, the crab roe.
09:46We just want to add something a little bit fresh to the dish.
09:48A lot of comments we get is like that salad with that crab Hong Kong chili sauce is so good.
09:53I'm like, but what about the fish?
09:55We're going to pick up our clay pot rabbit dish.
09:58Rabbit is ready to come out and we just pop it out the oven.
10:01Again, great, everything's falling off the bone.
10:04These are the clay pot.
10:05We actually got them imported from Hong Kong.
10:07And they're pretty amazing at heat retention.
10:10So we're going to put a little bit of oil on the pot, not too much.
10:13And then we're going to put ginger scallion in the bottom of the clay pot and just boom it up.
10:19We're going to put our roasted vegetable in there.
10:22So in Asia, especially in Hong Kong, we do clay pot rice.
10:26That's the purpose of the clay pot.
10:28It's the heat retention to cook the crispy part of the rice.
10:30For our purpose intention is to make sure we're serving an extremely hot dish to the table for the winter time.
10:37So now we're going to add our rabbit into the dish.
10:40So now that we have that nice and caramelized, everything is cooking well, we're going to add the broth.
10:45That is the same cooking liquid that the rabbit's been braising in.
10:48Let that come up.
10:49And then we're going to have a little bit of a slurry mix just to thicken everything up and make it all come together.
10:55And then now we're going to put the lid on it, let it rip for about 2-3 minutes and then it will be ready to serve.
11:04So we just garnish with a little bit of Dijon mustard and then a little shredded red cabbage on top.
11:09And this is ready to serve.
11:11The dish when it comes to the table is pretty dramatic, you know, because you have this like really hot pot and then you lift the lid up and this plume of steam comes out and you get to see all the rabbit, the vegetable inside.
11:23We definitely get a lot of like oohs and wah when it hits the table.
11:26Our goal was always never to have an empire.
11:31We like the stage that we built ourselves here.
11:33We like to be able to perform on the stage that we have every day and we look forward to performing every day on this little stage that we built.