WILLIAMSBURG, Brooklyn — Good vibes meet Chinese cuisine at Kings Co Imperial, a restaurant and bar serving Chinese dishes in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They also have a location on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Josh Grinker is the chef and co-owner of Kings Co Imperial. Grinker says he and his business partner, Tracy Jane Young, wanted to utilize their culinary experiences and training in a new business venture.
“At a certain point we just decided, you know what, we want to take the training we have in Asian cooking, and wok cooking specifically, and put it to use,” Grinker said.
Young described the moment Grinker gave her a call about going into business together.
“Josh worked in New York, and he called me and he said, ‘I’d like to open a restaurant. Do you want to come open a restaurant with me?’ I said no, I definitely don’t want to open a restaurant. And by the way, what kind of food? He’s like, Chinese. I’m like, you’re crazy. You’re going to go open a Chinese restaurant in New York City? I was like, good luck,” Young said.
“So here I am, 15 years later, and really proud and very happy with what we’ve done.”
While Grinker admits he is not a classically trained Chinese chef, he says he has a lot of enthusiasm about the food cuisine and is excited by the learning process. Young says they try to offer as authentic of an experience as possible at Kings Co Imperial.
“I think what we really tried to do in the beginning was offer authentic or, as authentic as we could cook it, Chinese cuisine. We wanted good music and good service and good cocktails, but we wanted to marry that,” Young said.
The co-owners say they started in a relatively small space before expanding. Now Kings Co Imperial includes a backyard with outdoor dining, a small private dining room in the center of the restaurant, and a bigger room they called the “Imperial Room.”
Some of the signature dishes you can find at Kings Co Imperial include kung pao chicken, a stir-fried dish with chicken, vegetables and peanuts.
One thing that makes Kings Co Imperial unique is that they don’t use any canned vegetables. In fact, they have a garden in the back where they grow a lot of produce they use in their dishes.
Another dish customers can order is the dry-fried long beans.
“So, dry frying is a technique where there’s no sauce,” Grinker said. “We use preserved kohlrabi root, fermented black soybeans, a little bit of ground pork for flavoring, for seasoning.”
Customers can also enjoy eating xiao long bao, or pork soup dumplings.
In the end, the co-owners say they hope to continue serving customers with amazing vibes and hospitality.
“I think, you know, showing up and being consistent and creating an environment where people can come and be happy and experience and hopefully, you know, feel good when they leave, maybe even better than when they came. I think that really keeps us going,” Young said.
Grinker agreed.
“You know, we’re a mom-and-pop operation, so we’re not a big conglomerate or something. So, it’s really boots on the ground to make sure that the quality is there every day,” Grinker said.
