Massive New Restaurant Development to Transform Houston’s Chinatown

Houston’s Chinatown is already recognized as a food mecca, a smorgasbord of delicious eats. Now, it’s about to become even more of a foodie paradise.

You see, the massive Bellaire Food Street is scheduled to open next month. This is not an all-new restaurant — it’s a true food destination at 9393 Belliare Boulevard, right in the center of Houston’s Chinatown.

Initial plans by developer Kevin Kan called for 24,000 square feet of restaurant space housing nine different concepts and a 10,000-square-foot food hall. Now, it looks like Kan has done away with the food hall concept in favor of more traditional individual restaurant fronts.

It may all be for the better, because now there’s room for even more restaurants offering all kinds of Asian food, all under one roof.

With this update, there will be a whopping 13 restaurants spread across Bellaire Food Street. Ten of the upcoming new restaurants have already been revealed. The final three spots are still unknown.

A trio of the restaurants — specifically a cafe, bakery and dessert shop — are opening in early February. Just give it a few weeks and noodle bowls, cream puffs and taro balls galore are all yours.

Migo Saigon, Beard Papas and MeetFresh are all scheduled to open several weeks after the initial February trio. All thirteen restaurants are expected to be open in time for summer snacking.

Here are more details on the 10 restaurants that have been revealed:

Migo Saigon

Vietnamese street fare comes to life with noodle bowls and the country’s specialty egg coffee. Egg yolks, condensed milk, sugar and robusta coffee all come together for a creamy coffee concoction.

Beard Papas

This cream puff chain comes courtesy of Japan. This will be its second Texas outpost, after an initial location opened in Katy this past August.

Airy puffs are their signature — think custard fillings in flavors like dulce de leche and green tea éclair. Then, for the less daring, there’s always mochi ice cream, donuts and cakes.

Meet Fresh

This Taiwanese tea-meets-dessert-shop gets its second location in Bellaire Street Food. The initial Houston area spot opened last November in Katy. Expect black sugar fresh milk tea with boba, hot taro ball bowls, tofu pudding, hot almond soup and more.

Fat Ni BBQ

Fat Ni’s skewered meats come Xinjiang-style, whether it’s pork belly, lamb or beyond. The New York-born barbecue joint also offers up strictly vegetable skewers.

This isn’t Fat Ni’s first Texas rodeo. The food cart-turned-restaurant kicked open a Dallas restaurant back in 2016.

Wai Station

This one’s a fast-casual Hong Kong-style eatery with few revealed details. But there are sure to be peanut butter French toast and chicken wings on its rotating menu of grab-and-go goodies.

Pepper Lunch

This Texas first revolves around popular Japanese dish teppanyaki. The meats, like angus steak, chicken and salmon, are prepared table-side on a hot iron plate.

Tom N Toms Coffee

This South Korean coffeehouse chain boasts 410 shops worldwide. You can go for your average cup of joe, or maybe a chocolate walnut TomNccino or sweet potato latte. And don’t forget the food — this Starbucks alternative serves up mozzarella-stuffed pretzels, garlic honey butter bread and more. 

Shi Miao Dao/Ten Seconds Yunnan Rice Noodle

Tomato, pickled cabbage beef and jintang noodles abound at this Chinese chain. The New York location is known for chef’s specials, like the lamb rice noodle and hot and sour fish.

PopFancy Pops

It’s all-natural at PopFancy, the place for fresh, hand-crafted gourmet popsicles. The Memorial City, Katy Mills, Woodlands and Galleria locations all offer the artificial sweetener-free flavors such as cereal milk, lavender matcha green tea and pineapple mojito.

Chatime

First came Katy, now comes Asiatown. And, well, more than 2,500 locations across the globe. Chatime teashop offers up banana milk teas, lychee yoghurt juices, hazelnut chocolate milk teas and grass jelly lattes, to name just a few of its beverage menu items.

Foodwise, the franchise is all about sticky bao buns, ramen bowls and Katsu curry.