Chef Kurt Evans opens Black Dragon, his spin on Philly Chinese takeout

Since the 1970s, many Black communities in the city have had Chinese takeout shops. Chef Kurt Evans’ neighborhood in West Philadelphia was no different when he was coming of age in the 1990s and early 2000s.

One takeout spot at 49th Street and Woodland Avenue, its counter set behind protective glass, still holds pleasant memories for Evans, now 39. “I remember the guy at the store, but we didn’t really know his name, so we called him Lee,” he said. “There was always banter going back and forth. The community took to him because he knew how to play the dozens.”

These stores’ food was hot, quick, inexpensive, and familiar, with American dishes like wings and fries offered, too.

It’s not pure nostalgia that has inspired Evans to open Black Dragon Takeout a mile away. As the mission statement explains, he’s offering “nutritious, culturally significant dishes that celebrate Black culinary traditions, all while maintaining the beloved look and feel of Chinese takeout.”

Its debut — behind bold murals in a long-closed former Chinese spot called the Golden Dragon at 53rd and Rodman Streets — is Thursday.

Like all of Evans’ culinary projects, there’s a broader social purpose. Evans made the scene in 2017 with his End Mass Incarceration dinner series, which brought together policymakers and community members for dialogue about criminal-justice reform. In 2020, he was among the chef-founders of Everybody Eats, which started fighting food insecurity in the days following the George Floyd protests. In 2021, he was among the creators of Down North Pizza, a North Philadelphia pizza shop that employs the previously incarcerated.

Black Dragon, whose sous chef is Pierre Sims Jr., last at Barbuzzo, also employs the previously incarcerated and those in halfway programs.

Evans said he began thinking about Black Dragon about four years ago, and enlisted friends who were in real estate. He’s done a lot of pop-ups to raise the money.

One of the first things Evans did after taking over the Golden Dragon was to remove the plastic shield at the front counter and to allow public access to the restroom. There are eight counter stools, but he anticipates most sales will be takeout.

At first glance, Black Dragon’s menu seems true to the American Chinese takeout canon — egg rolls, noodle dishes, crispy rangoons, dumplings. A closer look reveals that one egg roll is filled with collard greens, onions, peppers, and mozzarella cheese. A rangoon is filled with braised oxtail. And there are jerk chicken dumplings.

The “man man” noodles are pork-free — as is the entire menu, which is halal — and are topped with ground lamb, spicy peanut sauce, and zucchini. There’s General Roscoe’s chicken, a relative of General Tso’s but named after Roscoe Robinson, America’s first black four-star general. The general’s chicken is coated in a spicy St. Louis barbecue sauce, in tribute to his hometown. For dessert, there are sweet potato doughnuts, ice cream, and banana pandan pudding.

“Chinese stores are a lot of Black Americans’ first experience with an ethnic cuisine, outside of like other Black American cultures,” Evans said, as Lil Uzi Vert’s song “Lo Mein” played over the sound system. “We’ve experienced Jamaican food, for example, but Chinese food is what we know. Italian is next.”

In the last decade, however, the era of the Chinese store has faded, Evans said, as second- and third-generation Asian families sought professional careers. Evans learned this while addressing students at Villanova, Swarthmore, and the University of Pennsylvania, he said. “I’d talk to them about the Black Dragon and on average, four or five students in a class of 30 to 40 came from a Chinese store that their grandparents owned,” he said.

The economics of a Black Dragon are different from the typical Chinese takeout. “We’re pricing the food to the cost of business,” Evans said.

Egg rolls at Black Dragon are $3 and $3.50. Dumplings are $7.50 to $9.50. A nice-size dish of oxtail lo mein is one of the pricier dishes at $22.75 — $5 more than the man man noodles. You can shoot the works with a pu-pu platter: one egg roll, four Rangoons, two skewers, four dumplings, three chicken wings, and an order for rice for $48.75.

When it was Golden Dragon, he said he was told, the workers and their families lived in an apartment upstairs, even using the restaurant’s kitchen as their own. As such, the labor costs were lower. “I pay a fair wage,” Evans said — a minimum of $15 to $18 an hour.

So far, the early reactions have been positive. “A lady who’s been in this community for a very long time said it almost brought tears to her eyes coming in here,” Evans said. “She said she remembered the people that owned the store and how they treated her right. The funniest thing that everyone is asking is, ‘This is still going to be a Chinese store?’ So yes, it’s still going to be a Chinese store.”

Black Dragon Takeout, 5260 Rodman St. Hours: noon to 9 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday, noon to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.