Jianbing Comes to the LES with ‘Bing Kitchen,’ Opening on Orchard Street Next Month
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Bing, bing.
The Cast was booted – with steel toes, so to speak – in June 2015. The leather boutique spent five years in the shoebox commercial unit at 71 Orchard Street, but the new landlord (Malachite Group) shelled out $25.6 million, and that was the end of that. However, owner Chuck Guarino was able to relocate in a synergistic play with the Great Frog across the way.
This storefront won’t remain retail, though. A kitchen is coming. Bing Kitchen, that is.
The aptly-named snackshop specializes in its namesake, Jianbing, Chinese street fare that sorta resembles crepes. The food is apparently a popular “street breakfast” across China.
Per Serious Eats:
Jianbing stands are the ephemeral breakfast architecture of every Chinese city. At around five in the morning, the vendors appear with everything they need, packed on the back of a bicycle or motorbike: A heavy circular grill, a few tubs of ingredients, and a tin box for collecting their takings. Oh, and about twenty dozen eggs, precariously stacked in cardboard trays tied together with raffia string. They set up in unused spaces—doorways, shuttered shop fronts, street corners—and within minutes of the first bing(pancake) crisping on the hot griddle, there’s a line.
Grub St. reported last month that a Jianbing deluge is coming. There are already food trucks and pop-ups banking on the trend. Bing Kitchen is another hopeful.
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Photo: Clio Goodman
Build-out began inside 71 Orchard a few weeks ago, according to photos posted to the restaurant’s Instagram. Word on the street is that the official rollout is slated for sometime next month.
Bing Kitchen is the brainchild of Aaron Gallentine and chef-artist Clio Goodman, whose popular Puddin’ NYC shop on St. Mark’s Place closed last year. It was much ado over “operating with an expired food service establishment permit.”
Goodman’s team was not immediately available for comment.
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