2pm on Thursday afternoon. It’s the in-between-meals zone where restaurants feel dead, but a small noodle bar in Sydney's Regent Place has every table bar one full. Most of those tables host soupy noodles neatly adorned with different textures like a bibimbap. Others show off grilled chilli-dusted king oyster mushrooms, and soupless bowls of noodles topped with tofu soft enough to be minced by chopsticks. And most of those dishes aren’t found at any other eatery in the city.
Yunn might be the only Sydney restaurant currently focused on China's Yunnan province – particularly its rice noodles. The owner, Wing Yang, opened Yunn in late 2021, just as lockdown restrictions were easing. We asked Yang how she felt running the only prominent Yunnan restaurant in Sydney. After hearing this question, most chefs and restaurateurs who run one-of-a-kind restaurants tell us they’re proud, Yang did not. “No, I think there should be more. It would be better if different people opened different Yunnan restaurants.”
Why would she want to be the sole representative of Yunnan cuisine? The province is renowned for diversity. Of China's 56 recognised ethnic groups, each with a different way of speaking and cooking, Yunnan is home to 26 of them, with 15 ethnic groups unique to the area. Their kitchens have access to an array of mushrooms and vegetables that make Australian supermarkets look like Arctic ration depots.
Depending who’s cooking and where, Yunnan cuisine can be sour, spicy, delicate or extremely savoury. Some dishes take on the strong flavour profile of the province’s Southeast Asian neighbours, and others are simpler with more influence from Tibetan culture. “The Yunnan flavour is to have many layers: yes it's strong, but it's also interesting,” Yang says. As well as being renowned for having excellent rice noodle recipes (and a great number of them), it’s also the province of Chinese cheese, yak meat and dairy products, hot pots with more mushrooms than can be named, chickpea jelly noodles, Tibetan-influenced breads, pu’er tea and Xuanwei ham.
Sliced king oyster mushrooms and zucchini, grilled in a Yunnan-style at Yunn. Source: Yunn
The difficulty for Yang and all the other restaurateurs who came before her (Sydney used to have two more Yunnan restaurants, Spring Yunnan and Two Sticks) is that the exact features that make the cuisine unique are the same ones that make it hard to replicate in Sydney. “We use all-Australian local produce, but in Yunnan we have different vegetables, different ones every season – here it’s just the one zucchini every season.” Mushrooms are a big one, Yunnan has over 250 edible varieties, some of which Yang used to forage and cook with her family, something she’d like to start doing at Yunn with wild Australian varieties.
Incredibly, neither Yang or her partner (in life and business) Chingju Chou, are from a hospitality background. They’re not chefs either. Yang is a political science grad and before Yunn, Chou was working as an engineer. Their only combined experience? Chou’s stints at Haidilao and Spice World eateries, a sort of improvised training regime suggested by Chou’s dad before opening a restaurant.
Yunn's soft noodles with tofu. Source: Yunn
I think there should be more. It would be better if different people opened different Yunnan restaurants.
That’s not to say the restaurant was improvised, you can tell it wasn’t from the fit-out – which is inspired by wabi-sabi. The idea for Yunn came when Yang and Chou were fresh uni grads, and the two prepared for five years to make it happen. “It was a long journey. It's life, we just found a way,” Yang says.
It started with a dinner at her house for four friends in 2014. Yang made douhua mixian, or noodles with soft tofu and a chilli-soybean paste, now the signature at Yunn. That dinner that turned into many dinners for many friends, with many noodle dishes. “I have recipes from my family. I always loved sharing them with my friends, and my friends said, ‘Wing why don't you do any home delivery?’”
So, they did, selling Yunnan rice noodles through WeChat. “The customers loved us and it changed our life, we wanted to open a restaurant. I'm the kind of person if I want to do it, I do it,” says Yang.
Luckily, she managed to convince Chou to join her. “My husband was very supportive. I told him: ‘I love this career.’ If there was no Chinju, I can never have a restaurant.”
Sunday - Wednesday 11am – 8:30pm, Thursday – Saturday 11am – 9pm
