Brand-new Dallas restaurant Night Rooster is a sexy place where friends can dine on dumplings and fried rice made by two-time Top Chef finalist Shirley Chung.
What this pretty room doesn’t divulge is how hard it was for Chung to get here.
A prolific fine-dining chef, Chung worked for Thomas Keller and José Andrés before making her name as a fierce competitor on TV cooking shows and an even fiercer boss in kitchens in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. She secretly filmed the inaugural season of House of Knives in 2023 — and won — though viewers didn’t know until the show aired on Food Network about two years later.
In the space between House of Knives filmed and aired, Chung’s busy schedule screeched to a halt. In 2024, she was diagnosed with Stage 4 tongue cancer. Doctors recommended she have her tongue removed, which seemed implausible for a career chef and TV personality. Chung was confused and mad. But also resolute.
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“This is the universe giving me a challenge,” she said.
“I was determined to recover.”
She closed her dumpling shop in Los Angeles, Ms. Chi, and moved to Chicago for six months of cancer treatment. The 10 weeks of chemotherapy and 50 rounds of radiation burned her mouth and throat from the inside and out.
Doctors didn’t remove her tongue. But chef Chung couldn’t swallow, eat, drink or talk for months.
Some parts of the treatment were “a blur,” she said. She recalls how her face and neck turned black. Morphine, fentanyl and lidocaine couldn’t soothe all her pain.
“I literally got burnt to ash,” she said.
But from the ash, rebirth. It’s nearly a year and a half later, and Chung lifts her chef’s coat an inch or two, showing the small hole above her belly button where a feeding tube kept her alive. Chung fought, and she recovered. Her mouth healed. She’s in remission. Not “cured” yet, she specified, but she’s able to get back to work.
Her first stop was Dallas — a surprise, since she had roots in so many other cities.
“This,” she said while sitting in a dim Dallas restaurant, “is my comeback story.”
Inside Night Rooster
Of all the restaurants Chung has worked in — making French, Italian, Chino-Mexican food and more — Night Rooster brings her closer to the food she grew up around in Beijing.
Pull on a long handle with rooster claws and walk into the Dallas Design District’s sultry first-floor restaurant and bar, Night Rooster.
Chitose Suzuki / Staff Photographer
Chung is known for her dumplings, and several make the Night Rooster menu. But if a menu is a snapshot in time, Night Rooster captures the evolution of Chung’s palate. She once loved high acid, big spice and texture. Today, she likes “more rounded” flavor and softer textures.
After the cancer treatment, Chung fully regained her ability to taste. Her speech is strained because she doesn’t produce as much saliva. And, she’s calmer and wiser in the kitchen, she said. “And more forgiving.”
Many menu items seem “signature Shirley,” but with Texas twists. The beef carpaccio ($18) is studded with Asian pear, soy mustard aioli, charred onion oil and rice crackers. The cooks flatten each thin sheet of beef with a tortilla press — a new-in-Texas thing.
Wagyu cheeseburger potstickers (left), shrimp and chicken sui mai (top) and beef carpaccio are among the menu items at Night Rooster, chef Shirley Chung and restaurateur Andy Hooper’s Dallas restaurant.
Chitose Suzuki / Staff Photographer
Her potstickers ($15) are stuffed with Wagyu and a hunk of cheese that oozes with each hot bite. Bacon-tomato jam on the side adds acid and fat — but not too much.
Tea-smoked duck is the priciest item at Night Rooster. Diners can share a whole duck among several people.
Chitose Suzuki / Staff Photographer
The restaurant has been open a few days, but she hopes the tea-smoked duck ($108 for a whole, $60 for half) will be a favorite. Over a 48-hour process, the duck is brined in tea, then smoked and dried. Diners build their own little sandwiches in bao buns, with scallions, cucumbers and radishes, alongside sauces like smoked plum and chili crisp.
It’s Chung’s creative spin on her favorite thing about Dallas: barbecue. “I love it,” she said.
But why Dallas?
Chung could probably cook anywhere. Between her connections with the nation’s best-known chefs and the high-profile friends she’s made on TV food shows, why did this Beijing-born Los Angeles resident land in Dallas? And why now?
Night Rooster is open evenings only in the Dallas Design District. Upstairs (not pictured) is The Saint, an Italian steakhouse.
Chitose Suzuki / Staff Photographer
Chung and Night Rooster co-founder Andy Hooper have been colleagues for nearly 20 years, starting in Las Vegas. They talked about opening a restaurant together for years. Then Hooper made a plan to open a restaurant in the Dallas Design District during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The project took about five years — “the whole world was working against us,” he said. Eventually, a corner convenience store on Riverfront Boulevard was bulldozed and reborn as a two-story restaurant with great views of downtown.
Hooper envisioned a high-end Chinese restaurant on the first floor, and he knew just the chef. Chung joined him following her treatment.
Today, an Italian steakhouse The Saint is open on top of the Dallas Design District building. Night Rooster opened on the bottom floor on Jan. 31, 2026.
Chung said she got chills when she walked into the restaurant, fully finished. It had some of the essence of Ms. Chi, the restaurant she shuttered before her cancer treatment. But Night Rooster was fancier, just like Hooper and she had talked about.
Subtle symbols are placed throughout the restaurant, like the phoenix, a sign of Chung’s survival. Chung also points to the dragon, a symbol of Chung and Hooper’s friendship. They were both born in the Year of the Dragon.
Shirley Chung’s first restaurant opening since she recovered from cancer is in Dallas, at modern Chinese place Night Rooster.
Chitose Suzuki / Staff Photographer
The Jan. 31, 2026 opening of Night Rooster was Chung’s first new restaurant since her battle with cancer. Opening weekend was tiring, stressful and fun, she said.
Life doesn’t get slower from here. After Chung oversees the first few weeks of Night Rooster, she’s taking another journey in March. Watch her March 1, 2026, on Tournament of Champions, Guy Fieri’s competition show.
“I work well under pressure,” she said with a sly smile.
Maybe some things never change.
Night Rooster is at 1000 N. Riverfront Blvd., Dallas. (It shares a space with The Saint.) It opened Jan. 31, 2026.