Katy Asian Town’s Yelo Closes to Make Way for Phat Eatery Expansion

Yelo, the South Asian street food restaurant helmed by James Beard Award-nominated chef Alex Au-Yeung, closed on September 4 to make more room for its next-door, sister restaurant Phat Eatery’s coming expansion.

Au-Yeung, who first opened Phat Eatery in Katy Asian Town in 2018, took over the next-door space that now hosts Yelo in 2019, initially using it to double the Malaysian restaurant’s seating. But in early 2021, he flipped the script — using the extra space to open Yelo, a grab-and-go counter service format that offered Southeast Asian street foods like banh mi, hand-pulled noodles, and dumplings — foods grew up eating in Hong Kong.

Jenn Duncan

Now Yeung is going back to the original plan, closing Yelo to once again expand Phat Eatery — this time implementing a private dining room that seats 30 people and a full bar that specializes in Asian cocktails like a Malaysian Mule made with kaffir lime. The renovation is slated to increase the seating capacity to 130 people, with a total of 40 additional seats, according to a release.

Au-Yeung said in a written statement that closing Yelo was a tough decision, but with sales and demand increasing at Phat Eatery — and its second outpost planned for The Woodlands in early 2023 — it was a necessary move.

Good news for Yelo fans, though. Some of the restaurant’s favorite menu items — including its delicious shrimp dumplings and its 12-hour bone broth beef soup that features five-foot-long hand-pulled noodles — will live on at Phat.

Phat Eatery is open from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.