North Long Beach and Cambodian chicken wing staple Shlap Muan has been named the eleventh best place to eat in the entire country. While we all have our issues with Yelp!, one thing we can agree on is that when one of our own is recognized, we celebrate.
“When we made Top 10 in Yelp!’s list for Los Angeles County, we were in disbelief,” said owner Hawk Tea. “Making it to #11 in the U.S. is beyond our wildest imaginations. When we set out to tell our story and share our culture through food, we definitely didn’t expect this. Truly honored, thank you to all who’ve given us a review.”
How Shlap Muan came to define chicken wings for Long Beach (and the region).
At their compact restaurant with a handful of tables, husband-and-wife owners Hawk and Sophia Tea are serving playful, if not outright witty, takes on wing sauces and dry seasonings, all with a Cambodian-centric influence. And to understand Hawk’s passion is to understand the roots of Shlap Muan (which means “chicken wing” in Khmer). After trekking back from San Francisco, Hawk saw an amazing opportunity with a space that was inherently connected to his childhood: His parents’ Chinese-meets-Cambodian-meets-American restaurant in North Long Beach—the very space Hawk learned the flavors of his family’s heritages.
Arriving on the city’s shores in 1991 after staying at the Nong Samet refugee camp at the Vietnam-Cambodia border camp in order to escape the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, Chhay and Leeann Tea were like many other Cambodian families coming to Long Beach. And like those many families, they were rattled yet resilient: They knew they had to make a life for themselves and they chose, like many, the go down the route of food.
What Hawk has done to their shop—which used to feature a seemingly endless amount of Chinese, Cambodian, and Asian-American offerings in a fast-casual environment—is hone down their menu while homing in on their Cambodian side: Offer a handful of great items instead of a buffet of options—and that meant piping bowls of kuy teav, servings of lok lak, and heaps of garlic noodles…
…and further into it, Hawk’s wings, Those wings have come to have a reputation of their own: Inextricably Cambodian-American, with flavors like “Cambodian Dirt”—a lemongrass take on lemon-pepper—and “Pekang”–an outright witty deconstruction of the five-spice awesomeness that is Peking Duck—Shlap Muan has proven its worth.
Shlap Muan is located at 2150 E South St #105.
