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After doubling the size of Malaysian street foods spot Phat Eatery’s dining room this fall, chef-owner Alex Au-Yeung is cooking up a new project next door. The chef will team up with chef and former food critic Cuc Lam on Yelo, a “banh mi bistro.” The restaurant is slated to open late summer in Katy at 23119 Colonial Pkwy, Suite B-3, with plans to serve up breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
The idea came to Au-Yeung while he was thinking about what to do with unused real estate near Phat Eatery. “I knew I wanted to open a banh mi shop, but I needed to hire an executive chef to run it,” Au-Yeung said in a press release. “The only person I would consider is Cuc Lam. If she wouldn’t do it, I wouldn’t do it.”
Yelo will serve both traditional versions of the classic sandwich, incorporating ingredients like lemongrass beef or tofu, pork, chicken, meatball, and a cold cut combo. Other creative twists will include a Chinese barbecue banh mi and a “Pho-rench Dip,” featuring a banh mi and a side of pho broth as a play on a French dip.
Other menu items include vermicelli bowls, Vietnamese egg rolls, spring rolls, and shrimp chips. There will be an emphasis on coffee, with drinks like café sua da or Vietnamese iced coffee, egg coffee, and yogurt coffee.
The plan for the 1,500-square foot space is to make it look like a modern Vietnamese diner, with a yellow color scheme (obviously).
“The color yellow inspires, uplifts, illuminates and offers hope, happiness, cheerfulness and fun. That’s our mission at Yelo. Through recipes from countries like Vietnam, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand, we want to share the delicious and bold flavors that we love on a simple baguette,” Lam said in the release.
