George Kai-Chi Kao wears a black T-shirt beneath a loose and stylish black suit. A mop of black hair and a gray-black goatee frame his angular face. Tibetan prayer beads circle his right wrist. From a distance, he favors a Taiwanese Lou Reed. George worked lunch today at Royal China, his family restaurant, founded in 1974 and set in a back corner of the Preston Royal shopping center in the swank North Dallas suburb of Preston Hollow. He walked the floor, kissing cheeks, laughing big, drinking from a tall glass of Taiwanese high mountain tea. Now, as happy-hour regulars throng the restaurant, George steps behind the eight-seat bar and switches to a glass of Sancerre.
From seats at that bar, those regulars can watch the action at the noodle bar in the middle of the restaurant, where cooks in white aprons work beneath a cloud of vapor behind a counter stacked with bamboo and metal steam baskets. They pinch knobs of wheat dough into purse-shaped shrimp dumplings; steam soup dumplings flush with pork and broth; and tease balls of dough into long white strands, twirling them over their heads like ten-year-olds with jump ropes.
Across the dining room, under a flotilla of red Chinese lanterns, diners bend toward wide white bowls, chopsticks in hand, pulling slippery noodles toward their mouths. Come summer, when Dallas swelters, many of those diners hover over one of two cold noodle dishes: Dan Dan Mian and chicken noodles in peanut sauce.
Both are cheat codes for getting through triple-digit days, when I crave the one-two punch of chilled noodles and cold sauce. Chicken noodles in peanut sauce went mainstream a long while back. Royal China’s version, made with poached chicken breast and sauced with house-ground peanuts and sesame seeds, is based on a recipe popular in Taiwan, where George’s father served as a diplomat in the years after World War II. When I ask George for a wine to pair with these noodles, he drops onto the table a bottle of Domaine Serene pinot noir from Oregon.
Dan Dan Mian, a noodle dish from Sichuan province, is the newer arrival, now spreading quickly to the more dynamic Chinese restaurants across the South. Chengdu Cuisine in suburban Birmingham serves it. Kaizen in Knoxville tosses its version with ground pork and pickled cabbage. Northern China Eatery on Buford Highway in suburban Atlanta serves its cold noodles with slivered cucumbers and a bowl of chili oil and vinegar for dousing or dunking.
At Royal China, cooks boil thin wheat noodles, soak them in an ice bath, and toss them with soy sauce, white vinegar, sesame oil, and Sichuan peppercorns. To that traditional mix, George and the crew add white sugar. A little sweet, a little sour, their Dan Dan Mian delivers a chilling jolt, bolstered by the M-80 pop of those husked seeds that Americans call Sichuan peppers. The effect is layered. Sweat beads your brow, perspiration also acting as a coolant.
April Kao, George’s wife, began working in the restaurant alongside him in 1977, when his parents, Shu Chang “Buck” Kao and Hsien Ying “Shirley” Chang Kao, ran the place. (Buck passed in 2001, Shirley in 2009.) Royal China then focused on Chinese American classics. A number of those dishes remain: Wonton chips, with ramekins of duck sauce and fiery mustard, hit the table like chips and salsa. Egg foo yong, a stack of two beautifully composed cabbage and onion omelets, arrives with a gingery shrimp-and-snow-pea gravy. Some of the best dishes straddle old and new: Fried pork tenderloin, spiked with a seven-spice powder and topped with green onions, jalapeños, garlic, and red bell peppers, tastes like chicken-fried steak that took a junket to Taiwan.
Back in 2008, with a lease renewal in the balance, the owners of Preston Royal challenged April and George: Were they the right tenants for the space? Sales were down. The look was dated. Instead of giving up or moving, the Kaos reinvented the restaurant.
April took a trip to China and came home with new ideas about noodles and dumplings. A fine-art photographer, she also returned with a portfolio of black-and-white images that now line the walls. Here, stark flooded seaweed farm vistas. There, large-format family photos, overlaid to suggest generational passages. George and April began reading their customers more closely, too. Three synagogues cluster within two miles, and for years Jewish customers had begged the Kaos to open on Christmas Day. In 2008, they began serving dinner on that date. Today they typically feed four hundred people.
The new Royal China opened on the eighth day of the eighth month in 2008. “In Chinese culture, the number eight symbolizes fortune and prosperity,” George tells me. “The Summer Olympics opened that same night in Beijing.” We’re back at the eight-seat front bar. To my left, a Southwest Airlines pilot forks into a plate of bok choy with king oyster mushrooms. Two stools over, a woman in a tennis dress waits for a to-go order. “The kids wanted orange chicken and twice-cooked pork,” she says, sipping a martini.
Over the past generation, many longstanding Chinese restaurants, facing down economic and cultural shifts, have closed or gone buffet. Royal China took a different path. “Our customers were evolving,” April says, leaning across the bar. “We wanted to be a part of their lives, so we changed.” Dinner at Royal China in 2026, eaten as regulars crowd the bar, George and April work the room, and bowls of cold noodles land on tables, celebrates the fruits of their bold dedication to renewal.
Plus: More Great Noodles in the Dallas Suburbs
Two doors down from the Dallas Chinese Community Center in Richardson, in a suburban strip mall ringed by statuary of Chinese leaders and philosophers, Yuan “Papa” and Mei “Mama” Teng and family members run Jeng Chi. The menu spans Chinese American standards and regional Chinese dishes, with a strong selection of handmade noodles, including sublime cold noodles with shredded chicken in peanut sauce. Behind a glass wall in an open kitchen, cooks in white shirts and caps stretch dough and shape dumplings. An appetizer of Chinese deviled eggs, mixed with wasabi and pickled mustard tuber and served cold, straddles West and East.
John T. Edge, writer and host of the television show TrueSouth, began contributing to Garden & Gun in its first year of publication. He is the author of The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South and House of Smoke.
