The next landing site for Chindian food in Sugar Land? A 4,000-sq.-ft. space wedged between Busybody Home Fitness and the Stomping Grounds kiddie playland, in the First Colony Commons shopping center at 59 and Williams Trace, just a few doors down from the Home Depot. The new Hakka Chinese joint there should have its soft opening around the end of next week — presuming all goes well with the inspections scheduled for Monday. A grand opening is scheduled for the middle of March. “In India, Hakka cuisine is like Tex-Mex in Texas — kind of. It’s a very popular cuisine,” Irfan Motiwala tells Swamplot. But it’ll be all new for Sugar Land. Fortunately, Motiwala explains, the Hakka people are used to adjusting flavors to meet local tastes. That’s how the whole Chindian food thing came about, after all: in the 1950s, once large numbers of the already nomadic people fleeing Mao’s revolution settled in India, they started incorporating local spices like coriander and tandoori masala into their cooking, giving it a little more zing. Motiwala’s wife, Hsiaolin, and her brother-in-law, Gary Yan, both of whom will be running things in the kitchen, expect a little bit of the same process to take place at the 15425 Southwest Freeway location of Aling’s Hakka Chinese Cuisine. “If I find the people of Sugar Land eat more spicy than normal, i will adjust it,” Yan says.
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- Aling’s Hakka Chinese Cuisine [b4-u-eat]
Photos: Hsiaolin Motiwala
I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND IF YOU ARE MUSLIM AND A FAMILY OF 6+.
Over the phone was told that ‘Halal’ is served on request. While ordering at the table was told that the establishment applies surcharge of $2.00 per entree/appetizer of halal food. To summarize, on a Food Bill of $62.70, I was hit with a surcharge of $23.09 for requesting ‘halal’ and for being a family of 6!
Will not patronize this place again.
Hakka food, is an existing variant cuisine type in Cantonese cooking. You can find this type of cooking alive and well in Hong Kong and South China as well. However there are NO indian variant to this type of cuisine.
Walking in to be greeted by an indian host was a bit shocking. Casual examination of the menu, You will find no HAKKA food being served. Shortly, I’d rather they not put the word HAKKA in their naming.
Espescially, there are tons of Chinese living in Sugar Land. I would not do that. Also my roots are in the far east. having living in Hong Kong. and being a UK colony at the point, There is a fair amount of Indian folks living in that area. But if you’d ever seen mixing Chinese and Indian food together and market it as Hakka. That will be a GIANT laughing stock.
Victor,
You could not be more mistaken. There is a sizable Hakka population in India that bought over “Chinese Cuisine” to India. So the Chinese food in India is really Hakka cuisine catered to Indian taste and is not the authentic Hakka food. This type of cuisine is unique to India and not China or HongKong.
Similarly, you can find different kinds of Hakka influenced cuisine in Malaysia & Singapore.
What is the inner-loop option? I have had chindian in Sugar Land, but don’t know where to get it in town.