North York is getting a six-seat noodle restaurant

After closing his Queen West Wonton Hut location, chef Eddie Yeung decided to try something new. That something: Fat Zhu Noodle Lab, a micro-restaurant in North York that’s all about noodles.

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The tiny restaurant will seat six diners at a time and serve an ultra-focused menu that includes house-made black tiger shrimp wontons, slow-braised beef brisket and tendon, two styles of slow-simmered broth (a 10-hour master and a spicy one), and two kinds of noodles (egg, rice) sourced from a local noodle master.

“Our Wonton Hut in Unionville is still thriving after 16 years,” says Yeung. “As for our second location, while it was a wonderful experience, it also showed us how hard it is to run a big restaurant. A large space costs too much in rent, needs too many workers and wastes too much food.”

For these reasons, Yeung closed the Queen West location and pivoted to his new streamlined concept. “We wanted to get rid of the extra stress and build a small, high-efficiency business,” he says. “By keeping the menu amazingly simple and having a very small dining room, we can focus 100 per cent of our energy on making the food as good as possible.”

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Fat Zhu Noodle Lab will open this July at 1 Byng Avenue, right by Yonge, in the space that previously housed Sang Ji Fried Bao. The neighbourhood is close to Yeung’s heart. “This is incredibly special for me,” he says. “I spent my childhood here in North York after moving to Canada from Hong Kong in the early ’90s. Coming back to open a business on this stretch of Yonge Street feels like a true homecoming.”