Chef Zhan Chen – Executive Chef of Potluck Club & Phoenix Palace | NYC Cantonese-American Star |Cantonese-American Chef Redefining Chinatown Cuisine |Potluck Club & Phoenix Palace NYC | Culinary Rising Star 2025 |hef Behind NYC’s Potluck Club & Phoenix Palace | Chinatown Culinary Leader
Roots & Culinary Awakening in Chinatown
Chef Zhan Chen’s story begins in the vibrant, bustling heart of New York City’s Chinatown—a neighborhood rich in culture, tradition, and resilience. Born to immigrant parents who worked long hours to support their family, Zhan often found himself alone at home, left to navigate his own meals. What began as a matter of necessity—heating up leftovers, boiling noodles, and customizing instant ramen—quickly evolved into something far more meaningful. He discovered that food was more than sustenance; it was expression, memory, and connection.
From a young age, Zhan showed an innate curiosity for flavors. He would experiment with condiments, adjust textures, and reimagine simple dishes using ingredients available in his family’s kitchen. He added soy sauce, vinegar, and scallions to plain rice, or blended hot oil with store-bought noodles to create versions of meals he’d seen in nearby restaurants. These acts of culinary improvisation, though small, planted the seeds of a lifelong passion for cooking.
Chinatown itself played an equally significant role in shaping his identity. Walking through its streets, Zhan was immersed in sensory richness—the sizzle of woks, the aroma of roasted meats hanging in shop windows, the clamor of seafood markets, and the rhythmic cadence of Cantonese echoing from store fronts. Yet he also noticed the neighborhood’s challenges: cultural erasure, gentrification, and a lack of representation in mainstream narratives. This duality—of beauty and struggle—inspired him to one day use food as a vehicle to both preserve and reimagine the traditions of his community.
Although formal training came later, Zhan’s culinary awakening began long before any chef’s coat or commercial kitchen. It began at home, unsupervised and inspired. The limitations of his childhood—financial constraints, lack of culinary role models, language barriers—became the crucible in which his creativity, determination, and identity were forged.
Zhan often says that he didn’t choose to become a chef—the environment chose it for him. His upbringing in Chinatown instilled in him a reverence for culture, a commitment to community, and a palate attuned to the soulful, savory layers of Cantonese cuisine. Today, those early experiences continue to guide his work. Every dish he creates is, in essence, a tribute to where he comes from—a fusion of memory and mission that elevates humble beginnings into culinary artistry.
Culinary Training & Early Mentorship
After graduating from culinary school in 2012, Chef Zhan Chen embarked on a hands-on journey through some of the most influential kitchens in the United States. His first stop was at Isa, a trailblazing restaurant in Brooklyn led by renowned chef Ignacio Mattos. Under Mattos’ guidance, Zhan was introduced to a kitchen culture that championed instinctive cooking, minimalism, and a deep respect for ingredients. The experience challenged traditional rules and awakened in Zhan a more fluid, personal approach to technique and flavor.
Driven to expand his horizons, Zhan headed west to work at Jams in California, where he joined the team of celebrated chef Jonathan Waxman—a pioneer of Californian cuisine and farm-to-table sensibility. At Jams, Zhan immersed himself in the ethos of seasonal cooking, sourcing ingredients at peak freshness and learning to create dishes that were both rustic and refined. The West Coast’s agricultural abundance and Waxman’s bold simplicity taught Zhan how to let the natural character of ingredients shine without overmanipulation.
Eventually, Zhan returned to New York and continued to hone his skills at Pheasant, a Williamsburg neighborhood restaurant under Chef Vincent Fraissange. Here, he delved deeper into modern plating, event catering, and sustainable sourcing. Pheasant’s commitment to approachable fine dining and community-focused hospitality gave Zhan a chance to integrate visual aesthetics with logistical execution—skills that would prove invaluable in his future restaurant ventures.
Across each of these kitchens, Zhan absorbed lessons in discipline, creativity, and leadership. Every station he worked at added to his toolbox—not just in terms of technique, but also in terms of philosophy. These early years formed the foundation of a chef who could move fluidly between classic technique and innovation, and who would one day redefine what it meant to cook Cantonese-American cuisine in New York City.
Potluck Club – A Modern Love Letter to Chinatown
In 2022, Zhan co-founded Potluck Club with childhood friends—a vibrant modern Cantonese-American restaurant situated in the heart of his old neighborhood. It was a homecoming in more ways than one—his first professional Cantonese cooking role and a bold attempt to redefine the food narrative of Chinatown.
With dishes like:
- Salt-and-Pepper Chicken with scallion biscuits & chile-plum jam, and
- Jellyfish Tiger Salad with fresno chiles, cilantro, celery, and sesame,
Zhan’s food walks a line between nostalgic comfort and inventive playfulness. Potluck Club quickly gained recognition for its balance of cultural storytelling, community love, and crave-worthy dishes.
Phoenix Palace – Tradition Elevated with Innovation
Just two years later, in 2024, Zhan expanded his vision with Phoenix Palace—a more elevated, experimental expression of Cantonese cuisine located just three blocks from Potluck Club. Here, traditional banquet-style dishes are given elegant, modern twists. Examples include:
- Castelvetrano Olive Youtiao with lap cheong jam and fig mostarda
- Chili Crab Noodles
- Lobster Fried Rice with wok-fired aromatics
Phoenix Palace isn’t just a restaurant—it’s a reimagining of the Cantonese fine-dining experience through the lens of Chinatown’s next generation.
Community Impact & Social Ethos
Chef Zhan’s culinary journey is inseparable from his commitment to community empowerment. Both restaurants operate as more than food businesses—they’re community anchors actively involved in:
- Monthly meal donations via More Than a Meal
- Supporting Welcome to Chinatown initiatives
- Partnering with local artists and nonprofits
- Ensuring accessibility for elder diners through subsidized meals
Zhan is deeply committed to revitalizing Chinatown, not through gentrification, but by preserving its soul and uplifting its people.
Recognition & Honors – 2025 StarChefs Rising Star
In 2025, StarChefs honored Zhan Chen as a Rising Star Chef—recognizing his cultural leadership, innovative cooking, and community-first approach. The award celebrates his role in shaping a new wave of Cantonese-American cuisine—one rooted in memory, identity, and fearless creativity.
Signature Style & Culinary Philosophy
Zhan’s cuisine reflects a contemporary banquet-style ethos, centered around shared dishes, intergenerational storytelling, and layered flavors. He draws inspiration from:
- Traditional Cantonese banquet classics
- American comfort food crossovers
- Modern culinary techniques with a soul-driven heart
Each dish speaks of personal history, collective nostalgia, and bold reinterpretation.
Signature Dishes:
- Jellyfish Tiger Salad – An ode to banquet dining, reinterpreted with celery, fresno chile, and sesame
- Salt-and-Pepper Chicken & Scallion Biscuits – A fusion of Southern Americana and Cantonese tradition
- Wok-Fried Lobster Fried Rice – A luxury twist on an everyday staple
Vision for the Future – Restaurants as Cultural Beacons
Chef Zhan envisions his restaurants as guardians of Chinatown’s evolving identity—spaces where cuisine becomes a tool for healing, history-telling, and innovation. His long-term dream? To inspire future generations to embrace their cultural heritage through food, and to protect neighborhoods like Chinatown from disappearing into urban anonymity.
The Culinary Soul of New York’s Chinatown
Chef Zhan Chen is not just creating meals—he’s creating meaning. His work represents a growing movement in the culinary world—one that champions inclusion, cultural authenticity, and modern reinterpretation of heritage cuisines. Through his visionary leadership at Potluck Club and Phoenix Palace, Zhan has emerged as a transformative figure in the New York food scene, bridging generations, identities, and traditions through the universal language of food.
Potluck Club, with its playful and deeply nostalgic take on Cantonese-American cuisine, serves as a love letter to the Chinatown of Zhan’s childhood. It’s a restaurant where each dish speaks to memory—reimagining the classics that once filled banquet tables, takeout containers, and family dinners with a fresh, expressive twist. Meanwhile, Phoenix Palace elevates this narrative further, offering a more refined stage for the evolution of contemporary Cantonese cooking—where traditional techniques meet global inspiration, and familiar flavors take on elegant new forms.
But what truly sets Zhan apart is his ability to use food as a cultural connector. His restaurants function as community spaces, celebrating local heritage, fostering intergenerational dialogue, and creating opportunities for collective memory to thrive. Whether it’s donating meals to elders, collaborating with neighborhood organizations, or mentoring rising talent in his kitchens, Zhan’s influence goes well beyond the plate.
Honored as a 2025 StarChefs Rising Star, Chef Zhan Chen has solidified his role as both a guardian of Chinatown’s past and a visionary architect of its culinary future. His story is a powerful reminder that modern cuisine doesn’t need to abandon its roots to evolve—it can draw strength from them. In doing so, Zhan is not only feeding New York—he is nourishing its history, its heart, and its hope.
