Since launching Savannah Flavors earlier this year, I’ve had a blast writing the Chefs’ Cravings column each week, transcribing casual conversations from people in the restaurant industry about their favorite restaurants and dishes.
Although I haven’t done an official count, I know that no other restaurant has been mentioned more often or with as much enthusiasm as E-TANG.
In March, Savannah Magazine published an article, “Where Chefs Hang Out,” which may have been inspired by my own. In the article, Caroline Hatchett’s words and Jason B. James’s photographs captured professional chefs’ admiration for our city’s china doll. In one of those photos, owner David Xin smiles as he watches chopstick-wielding chefs Juan Stevenson and Steffan Rost tuck into a dozen E-TANG dishes.
Xin has every reason to be excited, as he has created an authentic Sichuan restaurant that gained almost immediate recognition and popularity.
In just a few weeks, every lucky family that loves E-TANG’s food will be even happier when Xin and his partners open their dim sum sister restaurant in CO’s former Whitaker Street home.
The personable restaurant owner feels comfortable splitting his time between the two restaurants because of what he calls “great management and servers,” as the second one comes to life just a mile from the first.
“I have a bike,” said Xin, smiling.
Eight minutes from door to door: a piece of moon cake.
“TOUCH THE HEART” WITH FOOD
Although Whitaker’s closed its upper floor a few months ago, E-TANG Dim Sum will only occupy the ground floor space of the building one block south of Bay Street.
The dining area includes a similarly sized bar to the one at E-TANG, which has remained largely unchanged since the beerhouse days, and Xin estimates that despite the smaller overall space, Dim Sum will only have three fewer tables of seating than the previous restaurant. Instead of clearly separated seating areas, long benches and rectangular tables for two or together for larger groups will be set up.
The concept is already in the name: a restaurant that offers a wide selection of dim sum, which does not mean “dumplings” but “touches the heart”. Originally, such filled doughs were intended to stimulate the appetite, not satisfy it. Yum cha – Cantonese for “drinking tea” – is when you eat enough dim sum to make a meal.
At the new restaurant, one menu will consist of dumplings of all kinds, and the other will offer a small selection of “classic Sichuan dishes” grilled, Xin said.
Each little pocket is filled with chicken, pork, shrimp, seafood and vegetables and is made by hand and on site. These fabulous E-TANG soup dumplings are available there along with Char Siu Bao (grilled pork buns), Jiaozi (pan-fried dumplings), Siu Mai (steamed), spring onion pancakes and more.
Xin hopes that E-TANG Dim Sum, with its 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. opening hours, can also gain a foothold in the breakfast market.
“If they want Asian food, there’s nothing,” he said of early-rising downtown residents and visitors to Savannah. “They want something light and easy in the morning because they’re eating lunch three hours later.”
In China, a coffee or iced tea meal with a few “not too greasy, not too heavy” dumplings is very common and can find many fans.
E-TANG-REICH
At the end of 2023, Xin and his E-TANG group began actively seeking to expand their Sichuan foodprint in Hostess City.
“First of all, Savannah is growing very quickly, so we’re trying to bring authentic Chinese food to the north, south and Hong Kong,” he explained. “We thought dim sum would be a really good idea.”
For anyone interested in learning more about the company’s name, Xin explained, “E stands for ‘food’ and ‘east,’ and TANG stands for the Tang Dynasty,” which he said was China’s most famous imperial period, with territory stretching from Shanghai and the East China Sea inland to Chengdu and the province of the same name in the heart of the country.
“Our dishes are very spicy,” Xin said proudly of his restaurant’s take on Sichuan recipes, which are rich in chili peppers, garlic and the eponymous pepper. Foodies who crave E-TANG’s crispy and spicy chicken know its uniquely delicious taste all too well.
From the beginning, Xin and his partners’ goal was not to get too deeply involved in the cost of a potential property, but rather to spend the money on food and crew.
“It will be more beneficial for the chef and the staff than spending money on grease traps and cooker hoods,” he argued, and so it took me a while to find the former CO site.
“We started talking in December and signed the lease in May,” recalls Xin, with the expensive parts of the kitchen infrastructure already in place. Renovations began in late June, with brand new appliances, a redesigned interior and updated furnishings.
Xin can’t wait to open Restaurant No. 2. All city paperwork has been submitted. The fire safety inspection was done on Monday.
“We are just waiting for approval from the health department,” he said, and plans to open the day after this gauntlet, hopefully by the end of the month.
“Good,” Xin said of his feelings on the proverbial home stretch, before pausing and adding, “And nervous. You know, every time a new restaurant opens, there are a lot of problems.”
“After maybe a few weeks it will be okay.”
In fact, I’ll be sitting down with Xin again in a few weeks to talk about E-TANG’s next new concept: a noodle bar set to open before the seasons change at its longtime Persepolis site.
FROM 212 TO 912
In 2020, Xin’s Taste of Sichuan in New York City closed after six years of operation—a culinary casualty of the pandemic. Later that year, he followed the advice of some foodie friends and made the big move south.
“I have friends in Savannah who work in the restaurant business and make sushi,” Xin said.
“When we talked on the phone, they said, ‘Hey, you should come to Savannah because we have sushi, American food, Italian food, Thai food, everything is very good, but no Chinese food. Not at all.'”
Instead of opening another restaurant in the Big Apple and facing competition from a metropolis, they suggested he monopolize the market in a smaller city.
All in all, E-TANG came together pretty quickly. In May 2020, Xin had his idea and started looking for the right place, but said, “We trust our food, so we didn’t really care about the location.”
“We had one requirement: a grease separator with a hood,” he added.
E-TANG opened in 2021 in the space Bier Haus vacated following the death of chef and owner Marshall Urstadt after a months-long battle with COVID-19. Xin kept the bar and the mugs, so former fans of Urstadt’s authentic Belgian-German brewpub will feel a familiar presence in this distinctly Asian establishment.
“Many people have told me about the previous owner Marshall. It’s so sad. He was a very good person,” Xin said.
A restaurant room that appropriately passed from one good person to the next.
Without a doubt, the best part of the admittedly short time I’ve been writing about the Savannah dining scene has been that I’ve met and made friends with hundreds of genuine, generous, delightful, dedicated and talented people.
It would be unfair and foolish to name a single owner, manager, chef, bartender or server as “the best,” but I dare say David Xin of E-TANG ranks right up there.
E-TANG Dim Sum (10 Whitaker Street) will soon be open seven days a week (9 a.m. to 9 p.m.).
