Penelope Wong, a James Beard Award semifinalist, started the Yuan Wonton dumpling food truck in 2019. To say it's popular would be an understatement.
Penelope Wong was prepared for an angry mob. It was Yuan Wonton’s first day of service, and her food truck was parked outside Seedstock Brewery on a hot September afternoon in 2019. Wong was hurrying to prep the kitchen, while her husband, Rob Jenks, worked on a vacuum leak on the truck’s carburetor, and when she looked out the window, a line of 50 people was already waiting.
“And from that point on, people started posting and re-sharing our food … and we just blew up, which really shows the power of social media right there,” she added. “I had no idea what a club sandwich was when I first started there,” she said. But over the next 20 years, she managed to work her way into the kitchen and then up the ladder, becoming Glenmoor’s first female and youngest executive chef.
She didn’t want her daughter, now 11, to miss out on the things her son, now 25, had to while she was making ends meet, so she left Glenmoor in 2018, and Jenks left his job. They both wanted to stay in the food and beverage industry but knew starting a restaurant wouldn’t provide that quality of life or the work-life balance they were looking for. Wong and Jenks needed something else.
In addition to the chili-garlic wontons — which are made with shrimp and pork, wrapped in light egg dough, and doused in Szechuan hot chili oil and Chinese black vinegar — Wong is known for her extra large xiao long bao soup dumplings, bao buns, chicken and ginger wontons, and homemade noodles, like peanut sauce noodles or Liang Mian Szechuan noodles.
Every aspect of Wong’s food is homemade. Monday through Wednesday, she works 10-hour days with Nguyen and Jenks in a commissary kitchen, grinding all the meat for the dumpling fillings, chopping aromatics and making dumpling and wonton dough. She said the goal is to make around 4,000 dumplings before service begins on the weekends.
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