Hawkers Asian Street Food — Restaurant in Chapel Hill

We arrived with anticipatory glee and left sadly disappointed.

Our disappointment was such that I rather risk backlash from Hawkers fans but warn those on a tight dining put budget to consider carefully before spending your hard earned money on a meal at this restaurant.

The ticket price for this meal before 20% tip was $80+. "Ok" food would have been acceptable but this experience took two road-weary travelers after a mentally challenging workday and left us depleted. Our high hopes for a fun streetfood experience smashed.

This review is directly intended for the, I believe it is four, owners of the original Hawkers of Orlando, specific attention to the Chapel Hill, NC owner(s).

I have enjoyed balut more than two of the three dishes ordered during our dinner visit on Monday, July 17th. If you do not know what balut is, be prepared to be grossed out when you Google it.

The Tampa Philfest is one of the larger Filipino festivals in the US. The festival is fun, beautiful, and intriguing with art and dance performances, music, cultural displays, and wonderful foods and sweets. If you are bold, try a balut with a cold beer.

Ok, back to the review.

We are a blue-collar Cajun-Scottish woman with an affinity for trying foods of different cultures and was super lucky to briefly live and eat in Hawaii, albeit on the super low budget; and an Italian-Puerto Rican descent Army Veteran who had the cool opportunity to enjoy the foods of Korea and Germany during his service. Our travel budget equates mostly to traveling the world via our kitchen and my collection of international cookbooks.

Here is my complaint of the Hawkers dishes we tasted in order of acceptable to near horrid:

1. Soup dumplings: to be fair, we did not expect the quality of those made with expert knowledge and technique. With that, we enjoyed these soup dumplings and would order them again.

2. Bulgogi: Not a difficult dish to prepare and highly satisfying when properly made. Hawkers' bulgogi was overly sweet, the texture strongly altered to a swollen mush by tenderizer and/or too long a bath in marinade. The result had a hint of the desired flavor but points taken away by remaining toughness, a spongy meat texture, a lack of grill char, and the too-sugary flavor.

3. Chili Crab: Online photos and Facebook video of this dish begged one to order this dish. 3 pieces of generous plump crab (soft shell) with a crispy breading and no appearance of greasiness. The sauce looked like it could have a biting and tasty hot flavor. What we were served was two small pieces of soft-shell crab, wet greasy crust, covered in a sauce that looked like Hawkers' promo video, but bland flavor that overpowered the crab. I removed the sauce to taste the crab and found it tasting old. It's not nasty as if one would vomit from smelling or tasting it, but 100% blech.

ps: The Singapore Slings were pleasant and refreshing.

*For those who love Hawkers, I imagine there are core dishes that are easier to prepare with more consistency than the dishes I am reviewing from the Hawkers menu. I am not dissing Hawkers fans, I am criticizing the food we ate...

Authentic Asian wow-factor in a small chain! We love this restaurant, and it is becoming a favorite when we go to Chapel Hill to see our daughter.

First, we are very familiar with Asian food and Asian street food, and so we knew what to expect and saw a lot of familiar favorites on the menu. That said, they do a great job with their familiar favorites. I had the duck fried rice, and I was just thrilled. Not only was this spiced perfectly, but the bits of duck in the dish were just so delicious and perfectly cooked, not dry at all. We also love grilled shishito peppers. These were good. We usually like them a bit crispier, but the flavors and dipping sauce were good. On another trip, we had the Singapore Mei, fun. In some places (that are a little bit less expensive) the Singapore mei fun noodles clump together a little bit with some spice, creating a bit of a spice overload, and this was not so at this restaurant. The noodles were slick and not clumpy and spiced correctly throughout. Every time I have Singapore Mei fun, I like to wash it down with a Vietnamese coffee. I expect this coffee to be strong and creamy. This one was excellent, a total buzz bomb!

My husband always gets the pad Thai, because he’s boring ;) and he said this one was good and although It wasn’t the best he ever had, it was certainly a solid offering. No complaints.

Decor is fun and funky, and at the same time it feels warm and welcoming, which is hard to pull off, Especially with high ceilings! The posters and metal shelves/racks near the booths give the space a bit of a sci-fi blade runner feeling. Which is a great thing actually. Because again, it’s fun, while the booths provide some coziness, and the color palette provides coziness as well.

Every time we’ve come in, it could’ve been a little warmer, so they may want to turn up the heat a little bit.

Overall, 4.8 stars, but I’m rounding up to a five, because the food was excellent, but there was a mishap with the Thai iced tea. It just…wasn’t…Thai iced tea. It tasted very unusual, and we have had Thai iced tea all over the world, and we had Thai au pairs caring for our children when I was in grad school, and we make Thai iced tea at home, so we really know what it is supposed to taste like. The server went back to the kitchen and took a sample of the Thai iced tea that she had poured us. She agreed that something was wrong, they perhaps forgot to sweeten it or something. Anyway, she comped it for us, so that’s why I’m not counting off for the Thai iced tea and giving a five star review. Excited to come back and try other offerings every time we are in...

this place is oozing with personality and flair. when you walk in it’s like entering a whole new space. immediately you feel ur eyes readjust to the soft lighting almost hiding all the eye catching artwork all across this restaurant. in the middle is a bar, with the back wall of this establishment home to the chefs furiously working away. i settled on a corner booth, slightly elevated off the ground. the service was quick and very attentive. the table itself was decorated in what seemed to be sports and pop culture media from parts of asia. hawkers asian street food is just that, a fusion of different street food staples.

i had the thai iced tea with the optional whipped cream and cinnamon sugar, the pork belly bao buns, and the steak-kimchi fried rice.

the thai iced tea base flavor was excellent, sweet, milky, and that spice that brings me back every time. it’s not spicy, it’s like chia’s cousin. the whipped cream and cinnamon sugar made it a tad bit sweeter and is totally not necessary but made for a great picture, right?

the bao buns were a little appetizer i chose. the size to price ratio leaves a lot to be desired but bao buns run small anyhow, what you’re really paying for is that cut of meat. true pork belly enjoyers will find this to be an excellent choose. it had some mustered greens, pickled onions i believe, a sprinkle of peanut, and of course, the slice of pork belly. it was a little sweet, savory, and that saltiness of the fat cap tied it all together in a single bite. i’ve had disgusting pork belly and within the first five seconds of seeing it i just KNEW it would be good.

the kimchi steak fried rice was everything i wanted it to be. it was a little spicy, had lots of aromatic flavors from what i assume is some basil and the steak it was cooked with. it had a beautiful color and it wasn’t too oily. the steak was a home run. so tender and juicy, marinated in gochujang. it was amazing. not too spicy for my wimps out there. the comically large spoon made me laugh but it highkey added to my enjoyment. everything was perfect.

the service was good! it wasn’t too busy when i came, around noon on a Tuesday. i was sat quickly and the food came out just as fast. absolutely can’t recommend this place enough i’ll be back to try...