\u201cThis is the universe giving me a challenge,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was determined to recover.\u201d<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
Doctors didn\u2019t remove her tongue. But chef Chung couldn\u2019t swallow, eat, drink or talk for months. <\/p>\n
Some parts of the treatment were \u201ca blur,\u201d she said. She recalls how her face and neck turned black. Morphine, fentanyl and lidocaine couldn\u2019t soothe all her pain. <\/p>\n
\u201cI literally got burnt to ash,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
But from the ash, rebirth. It\u2019s nearly a year and a half later, and Chung lifts her chef\u2019s 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\u2019s in remission. Not \u201ccured\u201d yet, she specified, but she\u2019s able to get back to work.<\/p>\n
Her first stop was Dallas \u2014 a surprise, since she had roots in so many other cities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis,\u201d she said while sitting in a dim Dallas restaurant, \u201cis my comeback story.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inside Night Rooster<\/p>\n
Of all the restaurants Chung has worked in \u2014 making French, Italian, Chino-Mexican food and more \u2014 Night Rooster brings her closer to the food she grew up around in Beijing.<\/p>\n
![\"Pull](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/F2LGH2O6ARHTVO2AYODWP7KWOY.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Pull on a long handle with rooster claws and walk into the Dallas Design District’s sultry first-floor restaurant and bar, Night Rooster.<\/p>\n
Chitose Suzuki \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n
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\u2019s palate. She once loved high acid, big spice and texture. Today, she likes \u201cmore rounded\u201d flavor and softer textures.<\/p>\n
After the cancer treatment, Chung fully regained her ability to taste. Her speech is strained because she doesn\u2019t produce as much saliva. And, she\u2019s calmer and wiser in the kitchen, she said. \u201cAnd more forgiving.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many menu items seem \u201csignature Shirley,\u201d 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 \u2014 a new-in-Texas thing.<\/p>\n
![\"Wagyu](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Q22HMUGSPFD6RJFKNCRLIPDPJM.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Chitose Suzuki \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 but not too much.<\/p>\n
![\"Tea-smoked](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/PFUBIBGHMRD7ROCJWURBVOJ3TE.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Tea-smoked duck is the priciest item at Night Rooster. Diners can share a whole duck among several people.<\/p>\n
Chitose Suzuki \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s Chung\u2019s creative spin on her favorite thing about Dallas: barbecue. \u201cI love it,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
But why Dallas?<\/p>\n
Chung could probably cook anywhere. Between her connections with the nation\u2019s best-known chefs and the high-profile friends she\u2019s made on TV food shows, why did this Beijing-born Los Angeles resident land in Dallas? And why now?<\/p>\n
![\"Night](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/KZOWSBIQ2RHXDFARO4JI4TSIHY.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Night Rooster is open evenings only in the Dallas Design District. Upstairs (not pictured) is The Saint, an Italian steakhouse.<\/p>\n
Chitose Suzuki \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The project took about five years \u2014 \u201cthe whole world was working against us,\u201d he said. Eventually, a corner convenience store on Riverfront Boulevard was bulldozed and reborn as a two-story restaurant with great views of downtown. <\/p>\n
Hooper envisioned a high-end Chinese restaurant on the first floor, and he knew just the chef. Chung joined him following her treatment. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Subtle symbols are placed throughout the restaurant, like the phoenix, a sign of Chung\u2019s survival. Chung also points to the dragon, a symbol of Chung and Hooper\u2019s friendship. They were both born in the Year of the Dragon.<\/p>\n
![\"Shirley](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/ETNCB4UPD5GRFCNQ3PQIRVVXEU.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Shirley Chung’s first restaurant opening since she recovered from cancer is in Dallas, at modern Chinese place Night Rooster.<\/p>\n
Chitose Suzuki \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n
The Jan. 31, 2026 opening of Night Rooster was Chung\u2019s first new restaurant since her battle with cancer. Opening weekend was tiring, stressful and fun, she said.<\/p>\n
Life doesn\u2019t get slower from here. After Chung oversees the first few weeks of Night Rooster, she\u2019s taking another journey in March. Watch her March 1, 2026, on Tournament of Champions, Guy Fieri\u2019s competition show.<\/p>\n
\u201cI work well under pressure,\u201d she said with a sly smile. <\/p>\n
Maybe some things never change.<\/p>\n
Night Rooster is at 1000 N. Riverfront Blvd., Dallas. (It shares a space with The Saint.) It opened Jan. 31, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brand-new Dallas restaurant Night Rooster is a sexy place where friends can dine on dumplings and fried rice…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[6980,9045,102,104,103,16514,1623,1622,354,2819],"class_list":{"0":"post-150872","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-chinese-food","10":"tag-dallas","11":"tag-dallas-headlines","12":"tag-dallas-news","13":"tag-design-district","14":"tag-restaurant-news","15":"tag-restaurant-openings","16":"tag-restaurants","17":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}