OmahaNebraska.com Interview with Joe and Joy Kang Owners, Blue and Fly Restaurant
OmahaNebraska.com Interview with Joe Cong and Yi Sun of Blue & Fly
Blue & Fly Asian Kitchen
721 S. 72nd Street
Omaha, NE 68114
(402) 504-6545
Omaha, Nebraska.com here with…
Joe Cong: Joe Cong…
Yi Sun: And my name is Yi Sun. You can also call me Joy.
How long have you had the restaurant?
Yi Sun: This year is exactly 10 years. We’re very, very happy, very proud of that.
What did you do before?
Joe Cong : I came to the United States in 2007 and worked at my parents’ restaurant for a couple years. And you know, working with the parents is always stressful. At that time I was young and I could not handle the stress, so I decided to move on and do something different. I joined the Army National Guard and served with the Guard for six years. During that time I married my wife Yi, and we decided to start our own business, our own chapter, so that’s why we started this restaurant.
What did you do before?
Yi Sun: Before I came to the United States, I worked as a tour guide. My college major was tourism management. Many times I talked with foreigners who visited China, and they asked me, “Hey, where’s the good food in China?”
That was very easy for me to answer because I was born in China, and I know what is good. I asked them, “Hey, what do you guys like? Do you prefer seafood, do you prefer spicy food?” I would always get them to a good restaurant.
When we decided to get married, I came to the United States. The first year I had nothing to do, so I was just cooking for him. And then I asked him, “Hey, I really miss some good Chinese food. Take me somewhere to eat.” When we searched, they said, “I’m so sorry. We only have some American food here, like broccoli chicken, peanut butter chicken. You want to try that?”
I said, “What’s that? Are you sure that’s Chinese food?”
He said, “Yeah, that’s Chinese food here, you know.”
And we try, we try. I forgot that restaurant’s name, but we tried that. It’s not bad; it’s just a different. And he’s Chinese, too. He was born in China. And I told him, “I want our Chinese food.” We cannot find it in Omaha.
So then later we went on vacation. We went to Chicago, and we visited my auntie in New York. In those cities you can easily find traditional, authentic Chinese restaurants. You Google and they come up, or you ask your friends or family, and they will tell you. So we start thinking, like, “Hey, maybe that’s a good chance for us. Maybe we will have one traditional Chinese restaurant in Omaha.” That’s when we started thinking about it, to organize and plan it. Since he had worked with his dad for a couple years, he knew… not everything, but a little bit about how to run a kitchen and he knew how to cook. He learned cooking in China, before coming to the United States. So it’s like, “Hey, maybe we can try it.” At that time we were 25, 26. We were still young, so we didn’t know how much it would cost. We didn’t know how much time we were gonna spend in this business. But because we were young, we just tried it and we just did it.
Joe Cong: For me, it was more like another fear. And because, you know, Omaha was a big, growing city by that time and we had almost everything almost, but we didn’t have decent Chinese food. So I saw that. In other places, they have really good, authentic restaurants…Korean restaurants, Japanese restaurants, Chinese restaurants, they all have that. But here we had nothing like that. So me and my wife started to think about it, like, “Hey, that’s not available for people here.” And by that time we had a lot of international students from UNO or from the University of Bellevue, and they were also looking for authentic Chinese food.
And so that’s why we started thinking about it and then planning it and saying, “Why not just cook some food that we ate when we were growing up?” and also give that to our local customers. Let them try our food and know the history about our food or the culture about our food. Now, ten years after we started, it seems like we are on the same page with a lot more people. They come here, start with American Chinese food, and then slowly transfer to traditional Chinese food. We see that happening a lot. And everybody, so far, seems like they all like it. So, I think I made something.
It’s really good here. As I was saying earlier, it took me a long time to find you.
I had different friends growing up. So I learned that–and it’s not just in America–but when people start restaurants with their food and culture and go to other countries or cities, they change it for the local population. While that doesn’t have to be bad, it’s no longer authentic. And if you happen to know the difference or you wanted to try something authentic, it’s hard to find.
Joe Cong: Don’t get me wrong, we twisted it. We changed a little bit for our recipes, too, but we didn’t change them. We made them less spicy or a little bit sweeter. We made small changes, but we didn’t change the main part. The technique, the original idea, everything like that is still inside the dish that we present to you. We do make it a flavor that’s more acceptable for locals…yes, we are…but everything else stays as original as we can.
What are your favorite dishes here?
Yi Sun: Oh, it’s a lot.
Yeah.
Joe Cong: Too many.
It’s a good problem. Good for you and a better problem for us [customers].
Yi Sun: Yeah. For me, like, for example, I like the sauteed green beans with garlic. That’s not only my favorite, that’s most of our customers’ favorite.
Another day I have a customer…that’s a very funny story. They are regulars, she and her husband, and they always come here, and one orders the green beans and the other tries another dish which is newer to them. One day he waved to me and said, “Hey, could you please come here? I need help.”
I felt very nervous, wondering what was wrong with the dish. I asked him, “How can I help?”
He said, “Could you tell me the recipe for these green beans?”
I said, “Oh…”
He said, “Oh, you know what? I can buy it. I can buy it.”
I said, “Yeah, I know you can buy it, but I don’t know it either. That’s from the chef, top secret. He won’t tell me. That’s the reason he asked me, ‘Hey, you need to raise my salary every year. That’s the reason all the customers keep coming back.’”
He was laughing, because he was just teasing me. He wanted me to know how much they love that dish.
So that’s one of my favorites. And another of my favorite dishes is scrambled egg with tomato.
I haven’t tried that one.
Yi Sun: Yeah, that one actually has been my comfort food since I was a little girl. I think if you ask any Chinese person, “Hey, do you like scrambled egg with tomato?” they will tell you “Yes,” because that’s our comfort food.
There are different ways to make it. Some families make a little bit sweeter or they make it a little bit salty. But I think in every family, the parents or the grandparents will make that dish for the kids. Like when I was younger, my dad and my mom would make that dish. If they asked me, “Hey, what you want?” and I said, “Oh, I don’t know,” they would make that dish for me. If I felt very sick or very down, they would look at me and say, “Oh, I will make scrambled egg with tomato,” and I would be very happy. I would think, “Can I make some noodles as well?” The juice goes to the noodles. So it’s a very typical family dish, like maybe barbecue for American people. When the spring is coming and the weather is so good, you remember backyard barbecues with your family. That’s what families did. So every family will do that for their kids, for their members.
So that’s one dish. And more for meat… for me, like shredded pork with spicy garlic sauce. One reason I like it is because it’s very rich. It has a good amount of different vegetables and the protein, which is pork. And the sauce is very flavorful… sweet, spicy, garlicky. And so in one dish, you can have vegetables, you can have meat. And the flavored sauce is very good. It’s good for any rice or noodle or bun. That one is one of my favorites. And the seafood, I would say the fish with vegetables in hot chili oil. That one is very good. The oil with all those peppercorns and red chili, Sichuan pepper, gives a very good flavor to the dish, to the fish, to the veggie. Some customers have said, “Oh, well, it’s maybe too much for me. I cannot handle all that spice.” But it’s not that crazy. All those spicy aromas, all those spicy flavors… it goes to the fish. And you can easily pick one and feel like it’s flavorful. It tastes spicy, but it’s not that bad. So I would say this dish is on my top list.
I’m going to try that one later too.
Yi Sun: Yeah, yeah. And also I will say another fish dish is the fish with pickle cabbage soup. When the weather is very cold or when I’m not feeling very well, I want some soup that can warm me up. He won’t ask me. He’ll just make the fish soup and say, “Hey, here you go. That’s what you want, right?” Yeah, fish soup is very, very good as well. Yeah, that’s for me…that’s for myself.
Joe Cong: For me, it’s more like simple, easy stuff. Shredded pork with stir-fried spicy and sour shredded potato. That’s my go-to. I love it. There’s no other. It has potato, a little bit of bell peppers, a little bit of carrots in it. And somehow, everything mixed together with the spiciness and the sour tart into it…everything together, it just amazes me…
Yi Sun: Yeah, that’s the Chinese way to eat potato. Sometimes when I serve that dish to the table, the next table customer says, “Oh, what’s that noodle dish?” I say, “That’s not noodles. That’s shredded potato.” That’s how Chinese people eat potato. We don’t bake it We don’t do the french fries. We cut it, we shred it into very thin pieces and then we stir fry it with some vinegar, no sugar, maybe a little bit of salt, or mix like seasoning and it tastes like a spicy, sour. Yeah. That’s also another very typically Chinese dish. Most Chinese people, if you ask them, they will say, “Oh, I know that dish. I love that dish.” Yeah. And some of them, they don’t like spicy. They will ask me, “Hey, can I make that one not spicy?” I say, “Yeah, that’s no problem.” People just love it. See, even though some of the dishes are supposed to be spicy, but because they love it, that’s okay. “I don’t eat spicy. Can you just make a non-spicy version? I’ll still eat it.” That’s how they show their love for this dish.
I’ve noticed that the palate is more adventurous in Nebraska than it was when I first moved here. So you’re able to find places where you can get spicy… At that level, it was very hard for a long time.
Yi Sun: That’s what most customers are concerned about. Because I’m working in front, I know most of the customers, and I understand what they want. Some customers come here to try our food, but they’re a little bit afraid that it might be too spicy for them. We want to tell them that we can always adjust the spiciness.
Joe Cong: Sichuan cuisine is famous for its Mala flavor. But it’s not all about Mala flavor.
Yes.
Joe Cong: And Sichuan cuisine, we’ve actually been seeing a thousand dishes with a thousand different flavors. You have sweet, like sweet and sour pork tenderloin. You have steamed, which is like boiling stuff, steaming stuff. And you have freshness with soup. You have Mala, this kind of stuff you ever see. And you also have a sweet and savory with the red rib. You know all that. So it’s not only about Mala. I know there’s a lot of restaurants before us that give information about like, “Hey, Sichuan food has to be very spicy.” But no, it’s not all about that. It definitely has more…hundreds more different flavors into it rather than just Mala itself.
I think your approach to cuisine with preserving it, but yet making it custom for the customer, is really nice.
Joe Cong: Yes, we can, and we would love to try the best we can. Some dishes I cannot touch it because you touch the meat bone with it. But at least I can lower the heat, lower the spicy level of the customer’s meal to the minimum. And also I would love to try my best to make my diners happy. I want them to enjoy their food. Why not? That’s my job, right?
I come here a lot, and I see that enjoyment, and it spills out into the street. The customer is happy, and they’re happy to people when they leave. So it’s a very beautiful thing.
Yi Sun: Yeah, we try our best to do that. We want the customers to be very happy to come here.
Actually that’s one thing that makes us very proud. Some of our regular customers have been coming here since the first year we opened, and in the beginning they always ordered American-style dishes like broccoli chicken. But when they kept coming, they would become curious about traditional Chinese dishes: “Hey, what is the other half of the menu? I never touched that, but it sounds interesting.” They would ask me for suggestions and say, “Hey, I like this flavor, I like this meat. Would you recommend something?” I would say, “Okay, that’s no problem.” And all our staff want to help. And then gradually they know more about the traditional dishes. They maybe find their favorites over there and when they are coming here, they will never go back to the American-style dishes. They become a Chinese food expert and say, “Oh, today I want a spicy food. So I want this, this, this, and another. I want kind of like a sweet. I want to try this one.” And they ask me, “Hey, is this one sweet as well?” They will throw me some questions…you know, professional questions. And when they come in with their friends, they say, “Hey, you guys don’t need the menu. I will order for you, and I’m sure you guys will like it.” And all their friends are laughing and saying, “Oh, you really know a lot right now.” That’s something that we like to see.
At the very beginning, we chose this location because it is very close to UNO, UNMC, and Creighton. At that time a lot of Chinese exchange program students were studying over there or working over there. We knew what some of those Chinese people were like me when I first came to Omaha and I tried to find a restaurant that served traditional Chinese dishes, but I couldn’t find one.
But right now our goal has changed a little bit. We not only welcome Chinese customers who come here for dishes with their traditional hometown flavor. We also welcome the local American customers who come here because they want to try authentic Chinese food. They come here to try something different, and then one day if they have a chance to visit China, they won’t need help deciding what to eat. They can open up the menu and know what dishes they like and what they want to try. So that’s our goal right now. Like the story I told just now, I feel like we are close to that goal because a growing number of customers are familiar with authentic Chinese food. They know how to order, and I’ll tell them, “You don’t need my help anymore. You already know everything.”
Sometimes a customer will come in with a group of friends who try to ask me questions, and the customer will give them the answer. I’ll say, “Okay, then you don’t need me.”
That’s a very good sign. Yeah. You’re an ambassador already.
Yi Sun: Yeah. I feel very proud, very excited. I don’t know how to express that feeling, but that’s right.
There are other restaurants that have two menus. You get a menu, and the other menu is secret, but you have to ask for it. When I first came here and asked for the other menu, I was very happy to be told, “No, no, this is the menu right here.”
Joe Cong: We purposely did that. We know that a lot of other restaurants have two separate menus, and you have to ask for the other menu. Why do they do that? Why not make all of their dishes available to the public? Why not let more people know about it? Why put a barrier in between? Sometimes I think that’s too big of a dream, but my final goal is for more people to know about traditional Chinese cuisine.
Traditional Chinese food is slow-cooked comfort food of high quality with a thousand years of history behind it. In the last 50 or 60 years, new immigrants from China have wanted to make their lives easier and own a restaurant, so they have made easier versions of Chinese food for local American customers: fried chicken with sweet sauce, broccoli with brown sauce, noodles with a ton of sauce, things like that. I understand why they did that, but over time it changed everything. In the next 20 or 40 years I hope Chinese food does not become like that. Chinese food is not something you get on a cheap plastic plate with a Styrofoam cup at a fast-food restaurant. I hope people will be able to sit down, take their time, and enjoy their food. I hope that’s what’s going to happen.
Is there something about the restaurant or the food that you haven’t mentioned that you think people should know but they may not know?
Yi Sun: I have another story. One day an Asian lady, she might have been Cantonese, came into the restaurant with her grandson and three of her American girlfriends. The ladies were middle-aged. They ordered lunch, and the three American ladies ordered American-style dishes, like broccoli chicken or Kung Pao chicken or sweet and sour chicken. The Asian lady ordered rice noodles with meat, a traditional Chinese dish.
The American-style dishes were ready to serve quickly, because American dishes are easier to make. When I brought the three American dishes to the table, I told the Asian lady, “Hey, I’m so sorry, ma’am. Your dish is on the way. It’s almost done.” Then she said something that I’ve never heard a customer say: “Oh, that’s okay, no worries. I know that Chinese food takes a longer time to cook.”
Sometimes I have to tell a customer, “Hey, I’m sorry. Our traditional Chinese dishes are made from scratch, and we cook everything fresh, including the sauce.” It normally takes a longer time to do this, and I explain that to them. But that lady told me, “Hey, no worries. I know Chinese food takes a longer time to cook. It’s not a big deal at all.”
I went back to the kitchen and told Joe, “Hey, that customer told me it’s okay. She knows Chinese food.” He felt like, “Oh my God, that makes my day.”
Joe Cong: Restaurants sometimes get busy or get slow. We only have two people cooking on the line, and I’m the only one who can cook traditional Chinese food. During the weekend, it can get really busy. I’ll get backed up with the traditional Chinese food, and it’s pretty much a one-man show. I try my best to push dishes out, but the bottom line is I have to push dishes out with quality. I cannot “easy it up” and make something that I don’t completely like or care about. On the other hand, our whole restaurant team would love every person who comes in the door to have a happy and good time. If something goes wrong, if we made a mistake or food take too long to prep or anything, there must be a reason behind it. I’m asking for forgiveness or for information to see what really happened. Think about it this way: in our team, there’s nobody who will ever purposefully ruin your day or night here. We definitely try our best, but if something bad happened, I will apologize. Let us know, and we will try our best to make you feel better. We are always trying to improve ourselves, step by step.
And also, there are differences between a western dining experience and a Chinese dining experience. Let’s start with the easy part. A lot of customers ask me, like, “Hey, why does this dish only have a vegetable and nothing else? No meat, no protein, just the vegetable by itself? And why does this one have only meat and doesn’t have any vegetables? It’s not a balanced meal.” Yes, this dish is not a balanced dish. I understand that. But also you have to understand that when you go to a restaurant in Asia, everybody eats family style and shares their dish with everyone else at the table. Each person orders food, one by one. You pick a vegetable, she picks a meat dish, he picks a mixed dish, she picks a soup or seafood, everything like that. So there are five, six, seven, eight dishes that come to a table, and everybody shares from the whole table. So overall the meal will be balanced for this whole table. It’s a bigger-picture balance.
In a western restaurant it’s different. If I go to a steak place and order steak, I want a salad, I want a little bit of green beans, I want a little bit of chili, and I want a little bit of fries. So I have protein, starch, vegetable—everything together on my plate. But there’s no sharing from my plate to your plate.
So that’s the big difference between the Chinese dining experience and the western dining experience. In a Chinese restaurant, there are five or six dishes for the whole table. Each person has their own plate, but the food is in the middle of the table. It’s a sharing dish, a sharing table, a sharing experience. Everybody shares the food from the dishes in the middle of the table. I think that’s the biggest difference between Asian and western dining cultures.
I understand that this can cause a lot of confusion for restaurant customers. Millions of times, she has come into the kitchen to tell me, “Joe, hurry up. Everybody is waiting for that one dish. And everybody has their dish sitting on the table and not eating because one person is waiting for their dish. Come on, come over there cooking?” I’m like, “Come on. How many times do I need to explain? First come, first served. You’re slowly waiting, you share with each other.” But I understand the cultural difference.
Yi Sun: That’s a cultural difference, yeah.
And you get very funny looks at the restaurants if you do want to share your food.
Yi Sun: Yeah. And for Chinese people, when the first dish is coming, everybody will pick up their chopsticks and start eating. But for American people, they are kind of like, “Oh, mine’s coming, but yours is still not coming. I will wait for yours to come, and they we’ll eat together.”
That’s a big difference.
Yi Sun: Yeah, that’s a big difference. But with more and more people right now, I will ask them, “Hey, do you guys want to share each with each other?” I always give them a sharing plate on the corner.
Oh, nice.
Yi Sun: So if you want to share, that’s a very good choice. So some of them will say, “Yeah. I kind of want to try this.” So if they start sharing, that’s the good part. I won’t force them, but I will kind of like guide them to “Maybe we can share.” We can try sharing.
So we like to do it. Yeah. My family, when we’re out, we like to share things.
Yi Sun: Yes, especially when people come in with their family, not with co-workers or something. Yeah, they don’t mind. “Oh yeah, I want to try. That looks good.” I try to do that. And yesterday I had a customer who is a very good friend. Last night we were busy. He said, “Hey, you guys are busy. So how can you cook? I feel like every dish that comes out of the kitchen is different. So how does Joe make it?” I said, “Yes, we have a total of 200 dishes on our menu. And some days it’s easy, like if we have orders that are very similar, Joe can make them together and they’ll be ready more quickly. But if there are 20 tickets and no dishes are the same…
Joe Cong: That’s my nightmare.
Yi Sun: Yeah. When we have a full house, all the customers are sitting there thinking “Why are there so many tables with nothing on the table?” It’s because we have 20, maybe 30 tickets, but nothing is the same. All he can do is cook one ticket, one dish, and then go to the next one.
And also sometimes customers are confused about why another table is getting their food before they are, even though the other people came in later. They’ll tell us, “You guys say, ‘First come, first served.’ So how did that happen?” That situation can happen because the other table has the same dish as a to-go order or maybe with the table before them.
Joe Cong: So like I said, we have two cooks here. One of them can make American food only, and I can make everything. But during busy times, I’m only able to focus on traditional Chinese food.
Sometimes, there’s more American Chinese food that come in on the tickets. Everything will go quickly because me and him are cooking together, right?
But sometimes there’s fewer orders for American dishes coming in and more orders for traditional Chinese food coming in, and you will see things slow down because he’s cooking American dishes and I’m cooking Chinese dishes. But at the same time, you will see American dishes come out first because he cannot help me with the Chinese dishes. He tries his best to push dishes out, but that means lot of customers that came in earlier will get their food later.
You don’t want to tell the other fellow to slow down?
Joe Cong: I can’t tell him to slow down either.
Yi Sun: Yeah. If we have a chance to let customers have their food quick, we don’t want our chef just standing around. Then he cooks. We want everyone to have things to do.
Joe Cong: We try our best to keep every customer happy, but our ability is limited. I know an American customer comes in and sits down and they have their soup, they have their appetizer, they have their meal right away. But a customer who ordered traditional Chinese food is sitting there for 30 minutes, waiting for me to slowly cook everything.
Yi Sun: They are very confused, like, “Hey, where’s my food? That table just came in, and they have everything already, but where’s my food?” It’s hard to explain. I would like to explain it to everyone, but sometimes I just don’t have time to stand at the table and explain everything. Most of our customers are very nice. Every time I go over to apologize to them, they will say, “Oh, that’s okay. I’m very happy to see you guys busy.” And some of them, they don’t say anything, but they just don’t come back. It’s because here we are slow. But we are not meaning to be slow.
Is there any question I didn’t ask that you’d like me to ask?
Joe Cong: Second location. People ask us when we’re going to open a second location. Unfortunately, in the next couple of years, we probably aren’t going to have a second location. It’s just because traditional Chinese food is really dependent on the chef’s personality. If you eat here a lot, then you should know the food always varies. It’s different. Even though you order some food all the time, you experience with the chef’s experience, you feel the chef’s mood.
Like my mood for the day. For example, some days she’ll be nice to me and the food may be a little bit sweeter. Some days she’s mad at me and the food may be spicier, more hot, or have more of a grill smell. All that is because that affected our cooking.
My stove has a hundred thousand BTU burner. Everything happens quick, and one second can make a huge difference. So that’s why you need a good chef. You need a chef doing this for a long time, with experience, and has a responsibility to keep every dish at the quality that we can.
So no second location is what you’re saying.
Joe Cong: No, no second location.
But if someone were to read this later and maybe had the skills…
Joe Cong: Come here and apply, please! Come here and apply. I would try my best to teach everything, and yeah, let’s do it. Who knows? Let’s do it.
You never know what will happen.
Joe Cong: I have tried to teach about five or six different cooks, and to be honest, being a chef is not the easiest career ever. A lot of hours, always activities, with stress during the busy times. It would take a lot, so we’ll see. If somebody really wants to do the challenge, let me know. I would love to teach.
Thank you very much, both of you.
Blue & Fly Asian Kitchen
721 S 72nd St., Omaha, NE 68114
(402) 504-6545
https://www.blueflyasiankitchen.com
