A Survey of Asian Cuisine in Charlotte

What fills the gaps that remain in Charlotte’s evolving food scene? More and more, it’s Chinese, Japanese, Indian—and Vietnamese, Burmese, Uzbek, Turkish, Cambodian, Filipino…

Here, we look at a sampling of Asian Markets, Noteworthy Dishes, Restaurant Owners, and additional Restaurants To Try.

ASIAN MARKETS

Asian Shwe Myanmar Market

Asian Shwe Myanmar

8829 E. W.T. Harris Blvd., Ste. 115 

It’s easy to miss in the east Charlotte shopping center that’s home to Tacos El Regio and King of Spicy Indian & Nepali Restaurant. But its roster of international tenants also includes this family-owned market that specializes in the foods of Myanmar (formerly Burma). Find kits to make laphet thoke (fermented tea leaf salad) or mohinga (fish noodle soup—and the national dish of Myanmar), plus noodles, sauces, spices, and frozen foods. They sell a mix of packaged and homemade baked goods, too.

Golden Elephant Asian Market

Golden Elephant Lao-Asian Market

434 Old Little Rock Road

This family-owned market opened six years ago in the Pawtucket Village Shopping Center, at the intersection of Little Rock Road, Moores Chapel Road, and Freedom Drive. Owner Bo Sayaphet says this part of northwest Charlotte appealed to him because of its large Southeast Asian population and proximity to the Buddhist temple down the street. “A lot of our customers are from Malaysia, Cambodia, and Laos,” he says. “My family is from Laos, but I’m the first generation born here.” He usually works the register but says his cousin and younger sister often help him, too.

The aisles are narrow and cluttered with cardboard boxes that carry new shipments of produce, marinades, and cans of boba tea. Shelves are stocked with gochujang, kimchi ramen, rice noodles, and guava candy; the freezer section has frozen anchovies, spiny eel, and baby octopus. On weekends, the market has grab-and-go items like spring rolls, banh mi sandwiches, and bao buns. Sayaphet says those days tend to be their busiest.

Golden Elephant was open for less than a year when the pandemic hit, but COVID actually boosted business. “There was a rice shortage during that time, and lots of places were sold out,” Sayaphet says, “so it brought more people who wouldn’t normally come here.”

In April, he was able to expand when the space next door opened up. He plans to add freezer items, a bigger grab-and-go section, and shelves for the fried Thai chile pepper chips he rarely can keep in stock.

Filipino Mart

Filipino Market 

11855 N. Tryon St., Ste A

Most customers who walk through these doors are Filipino and know exactly what they’re looking for, but don’t be intimidated if you’re unfamiliar with anything you see. Filipino Mart’s three aisles are packed with noodles, sauces, spices, snacks, cleansers, and cosmetic products shipped directly from the Philippines—and owner Suzanne Silva Horne can tell you about each one.

The dried mangoes near the register? Those are top sellers. The grated cassava in the refrigerator? Cook it with sugar and coconut cream, wrap it in banana leaves, and boil them to make suman, a Filipino snack similar to a tamale. And the Kojie San Skin Lightening Soap? “It really does make your skin lighter,” Horne says. “It’s more desirable in Filipino culture.”

Champorado, she explains, is a sweet chocolate rice porridge you can eat for breakfast. Sarsi is like the Southeast Asian version of root beer. Most of the baked goods come from one of the Philippines’ best-known bakery brands, Goldilocks. If you’ve never tried ube, a purple yam native to the Philippines, there’s a good chance Horne will tear open a bag of Oishi Pillows to let you sample a few of the ube-filled crackers. If you like what you taste, she’ll direct you to the freezer full of ube ice cream.

Horne and her husband, Drey, opened Filipino Mart in 2019 out of necessity. Horne, originally from Dumaguete in the Visayas region, loves to cook. She struggled to find Filipino ingredients in local specialty stores, so she decided to open her own. Filipino customers know her, but she gets quite a few home chefs who want to learn more about this cuisine, too. “People will come in and say, ‘My neighbors are Filipino. I tried this and want some,’” she says. Some want the ingredients to make chicken satay skewers, while others just want frozen egg rolls that taste like their favorite takeout variety. Occasionally, she gets a student from nearby UNC Charlotte who’s craving instant noodles that taste a bit fancier than Top Ramen.

During lockdown (“our busiest time”), Horne delivered grocery orders door-to-door to nearby customers. Today, she accepts balikbayan boxes, or care packages, that Filipino immigrants send to loved ones back home.

Prime Fish Cellar

Prime Fish Cellar

2921 Providence Road, Ste. 101

Diners often ask where they can purchase a specific sake or cut of fish after a meal at one of their restaurants, so the team behind Prime Fish and Omakase Experience expanded their portfolio with a retail space. In early 2024, they opened this gourmet market and bottle shop in Providence Plaza. It’s just a few doors down from Omakase, so many customers stop by after dinner for an encore of something they tasted.

Shelves brim with rare wines, premium sakes, fresh wasabi roots from Japan, and hard-to-find ingredients to make your own sushi. It’s also the only Charlotte retailer to carry the Yubari King muskmelon, one of the most expensive fruits in the world.

Zaytuna Halal Market

Zaytuna Halal Market

10227 University City Blvd., Ste. B

This University City market has plenty of prepackaged halal meat if you’re in a rush, but it’s best to head to the counter in the back, where a butcher cuts fresh chicken, lamb, goat, and beef any way you like. When you’re on the hunt for something specific, like the ingredients to make falafel, ask general manager Majd Zeidan. He’ll direct you to the best olive oil to create that golden crust or open a box of his latest spice shipment to show you the cardamom he prefers. 

Refrigerators are packed with cheeses: kashkaval, made from the milk of cows, sheep, goats, or a mixture; labneh, a soft, tangy cheese made from strained yogurt; and gaimar, a creamy milk spread that’s popular in Middle Eastern cuisine. Jugs of date syrup, ghee, and extra-virgin olive oil line the aisles, and baked goods include fresh flatbreads, baklava, and tea biscuits. The chocolates and gift sets near the register are unavoidable, so go ahead and treat yourself to one of those, too. 

Hatoya Mart in Pineville, NC

Hatoya Mart Japanese Food Grocery

605 N. Polk St., Ste. A, Pineville

Quent Xu opened this Pineville market in 1992, and parts of it feel frozen in time. One wall houses an extensive selection of Japanese anime DVD rentals, and a shelf adjacent to the restroom brims with a mix of new and tattered novels and cookbooks. The market has just five aisles, and every inch is jam-packed with merchandise.

You can easily spend an hour or two browsing shelves of fresh produce, sauces, instant ramen, noodles, miso paste, spices, and frozen foods. One corner teems with 5-, 10-, and 25-pound bags of rice; a pastry case contains red-bean rice cakes, strawberry daifuku (mochi), matcha Swiss rolls, and miso butter cookies. The beverage refrigerator contains a hodgepodge of rare sakes and Japanese beers. At the end of one aisle is a display of carp-shaped wind socks, typically flown to celebrate Tango no Sekku, or Children’s Day, in Japan.

Shoppers can find everything they need to make their own sushi or sashimi, including frozen sushi-grade fish, bamboo mats, and chef’s knives. They’ve also got home goods like donburi bowls, chopsticks, and cooking utensils, plus health and beauty products like hair dyes and face washes. Closer to the register, where Xu happily greets his regulars in Japanese, kids eye the bags of yuzu gummy candy, Hello Kitty tchotchkes, and Maneki-neko (lucky cat figurines) and beg their parents for a treat.

Also, check out What You’ll Find At Charlotte’s Super G Mart. 

NOTEWORTHY DISHES

Curry Gate Chicken Biryani with a side of yogurt sauce

Biryani with Chicken

Curry Gate, Multiple locations

Pack your harnesses and crampons and enter Curry Gate ready to scale a mountain. When you order the Chicken Biryani ($15), a South Asian mixed-rice dish, your server will ask about your preferred spice level between 1 (mild) and 10 (definitely not mild). Tread carefully—although the restaurant does serve its biryani with a side of yogurt sauce, which can cool things off if you go too hard.

The biryani arrives in a steaming heap. It looks like a simple mound of fragrant basmati rice—yellow from spices that include turmeric, ginger, coriander, cumin, cinnamon, garlic, and mace—topped with a few slices of lemon and raw red onion. But dig in with your fork, and you’ll find whole chicken drumsticks and wings. (You can also order goat, lamb, shrimp, or vegetable versions.)

Ready to go higher? Order the Curry Gate Special Biryani ($20), which gets you the regular Biryani with Chicken, topped with a pile of Chicken 65, a bright-red, saucy South Indian fried chicken. That’s right—two kinds of chicken, mother-clucker. However you order, Curry Gate’s Biryani is stuffed with so many spices, you’ll swear you taste a different flavor in every bite.

Lams Kitchen Xiaolongbao – pork soup dumplings

Xiaolongbao

Lam’s Kitchen, 3016 Weddington Road, Matthews

“It’s very hot, OK?” says the server. She hands over a lidded wicker steam basket that contains seven dumplings. They look like miniature gunny sacks. I let them cool for a few minutes lest they scald my mouth.

Xiaolongbao—pork soup dumplings, sometimes rendered as xiao long bao—is a relatively recent creation considering China’s 4,000-year history. A small restaurant owner in 19th-century Shanghai was making pork-filled bao buns—slightly sweetened, leavened versions of dumplings—when he noticed that the gelatin in the meat liquified under steaming. The result was a bao bun that contained a spoonful’s worth of pork broth with the meat. That’s why they’re called “soup dumplings.” In China, they’re especially popular at breakfast.

At Lam’s, Xiaolongbao ($13) is served only at lunch. You can eat the dumplings with chopsticks, of course, but the spoon that accompanies the basket ensures that you don’t lose any broth on the table or down your chin. Each dumpling is a bit too big to eat in one bite, so the operation can be tricky. But the delicately pleated dough, pork filling, and rich liquid combine for a surprising blend of textures and flavors in a small package—as long as you wait before you dig in.

Open Rice Hong Kong Style Roasted Duck

Hong Kong Style Roasted Duck

Open Rice, 1100 Metropolitan Ave., Ste. 100, and 9882 Rea Road, Ste. F

With the exception of the Christmas goose in The Muppet Christmas Carol, we’ve never seen a dead bird as gorgeous as Open Rice’s Hong Kong Style Roasted Duck. Whether you order a whole ($46.50) or half ($24.50) bird, it arrives browned and riding on a bed of roasted baby bok choy. The skin crackles when you bite. The tender, juicy meat inside carries heaps of flavor—star anise, cloves, Chinese cinnamon, Sichuan pepper, fennel, ginger, garlic, scallions. Ask for a side of hoisin sauce. Hong Kong-style duck is a Cantonese adaptation of Peking duck, which dates back to the medieval Yuan dynasty. Both styles have complicated preparation processes that typically take between 24 and 48 hours.

Musashi’s Chirashi

Chirashi

Musashi Japanese Restaurant, 10110 Johnston Road

Chirashi isn’t for the California or Philly roll crowd. It’s for the lovers of raw seafood who appreciate their unadulterated flavors. Chirashi is always a colorful array of raw seafood atop a bed of sushi rice. But what exactly is included in your bowl depends on where you order it. If you order it from, say, Musashi Japanese Restaurant in Southeast Charlotte, you’ll get slices of tuna, salmon, red snapper, sea urchin, scallop, eel, boiled octopus, sweet shrimp, salmon roe, and tamagoyako (rolled omelet), plus pickled ginger, wasabi, sesame seeds, and nori seaweed flakes ($35). Spread that wasabi around, drizzle on a modest amount of soy sauce, and dive into this ocean of flavor.

Lang Van Ca Phe Sua Da & Nong Vietnamese Coffee

Ca Phe Sua Da & Nong (Vietnamese Coffee)

Lang Van, 3019 Shamrock Dr.

Lang Van’s Coffee is as warm, vibrant, and sweet as the longstanding Vietnamese restaurant’s beloved owner, Dan Nguyen. (Nguyen opened Lang Van in 1990, and she’s created a long roster of dedicated regulars, each of whom she calls “my love.”) The coffee ($5.95) arrives at the table still dripping slowly from the metal filter, called a phin, and into a glass. The brew takes several minutes to finish, but the result is several inches of dark, strong, rich coffee atop a base of thick sweetened condensed milk. (You can order the coffee without the sweet milk, but why?) Remove the phin and give it all a good, long stir with your spoon to dissolve the sticky cream into the hot coffee. Ask for ice to pour it over if you’d like. Vietnamese coffee is thicker and creamier than a latte, and it’s traditionally savored slowly. The Lang Van experience isn’t one you want to rush, anyway. 

Pepero Korean Restaurant’s Ddukbokki

Ddukbokki

Pepero Korean Restaurant, 10920 Monroe Road, Matthews 

When you walk through the side door of Pepero, the Korean market is to your left. The aroma of fresh fish lures you to the right. There you find an unfussy Korean restaurant with vinyl floor tiles, faux-brick walls, and wooden tables. The menu is photo-heavy for those unfamiliar with Korean cuisine, but you know what you’re here for: ddukbokki (also frequently spelled tteokbokki), a popular street food from Seoul, South Korea, that translates to “stir-fried rice cakes.” (North Korea banned the dish last year because of its South Korean origins.)

At Pepero, your ddukbokki ($9.99) arrives steaming on a large oval plate. The rice-cake dumplings (each the size and shape of a string-cheese stick) are served with thin slices of fish cake and vegetables in a silky, red gochujang-based sauce that no stain remover will fix if you spill. It’s then topped with half of a boiled egg, fresh chopped green onions, and sesame seeds, and served with a side of danmuji, or yellow pickled radish. The dumplings are soft and bouncy, the sauce sweet with a touch of spicy heat. The dish’s aroma and warmth may call to mind some other beloved comfort foods, like spaghetti or Southern chicken and dumplings.

RESTAURANT OWNERS

Mustafa Kocama

Mustafa Kocaman

Owner of Mustafa’s Place, Multiple locations

Employee Altyn greets me warmly when I enter Mustafa’s Place in Salisbury on a Thursday morning. Mustafa Kocaman relaxes and plays with Altyn’s 2-year-old son in a back corner of his quiet restaurant. As Altyn scoops slices of baklava and kadayif out of metal baking pans, Kocaman invites me to join him. Altyn soon joins us, too, bringing the popular Turkish desserts and coffee in delicate china cups.

I pick up a piece of chocolate baklava. “Wait,” Kocaman says. “Turn it.” He explains that baklava is best when the fragrant syrup on the bottom is pressed to the roof of the mouth. With Altyn’s son between us in his dinosaur pajamas and Altyn helping translate for her friend and boss, Kocaman tells me how he came to own this place.

A decade ago, he was a teacher and activist in Turkey with an Islam-based civil society movement called Hizmet. Hizmet’s teachings promote democracy and condemn violence, so Kocaman openly resisted the country’s president-turned-dictator, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Police went to Kocaman’s home, threatened him with decades in prison, and took almost everything he owned. He fled to the U.S., leaving behind his wife and then-7-year-old son, who remain in Turkey.

He arrived in Los Angeles in 2015 with just $1,500. Jobs with food trucks took him across the country until he landed in the Charlotte area. He worked 16 different jobs in his first year here—selling newspapers, cutting grass, cleaning windows, driving for Uber, selling baklava. In 2017, he leased an ice cream shop, Susa’s Ice Cream Café, in a Harrisburg strip mall. He sold ice cream and baklava there for two years before he bought the pizza shop next door. It became the first of his now three restaurants called Mustafa’s Place. (He had a fourth in Bessemer City, which he’s closed.)

Kocaman serves Turkish foods—köfteler, kebaps, gyros, lamb chops, salads—and desserts at all his restaurants. The Harrisburg restaurant (5084 N.C. Highway 49) also sells pizza and has a halal butcher shop, and the Spencer location (701 Salisbury Ave.) has a catering operation. This one in downtown Salisbury (127 N. Main St.) is a cozy café that also serves coffee and hosts occasional live music nights.

We’ve been talking for about a half hour when the first of the lunch crowd walks in. Kocaman kisses Altyn’s son on the cheek as he heads into the kitchen to fire up the grill.

Riaz Khan, owner Zafran Kabab Palace

Riaz Khan

Owner of Zafran Kabab Palace, 230 E. W.T. Harris Blvd

It’s mid-afternoon on a Friday during Ramadan, so only a couple of patrons are in Zafran Kabab Palace. Riaz Khan sits in his leather chair behind a wooden desk in the back corner. Tacked on the wall behind him is a poster-sized photo of former presidents John F. Kennedy and Mohammad Ayub Khan (no relation) of Pakistan outside the White House in 1961.

Riaz’s first trips to the U.S. were to Los Angeles and Hawaii with the Pakistan Navy in the 1980s. After he left the military in the ’90s, he emigrated from his native Peshawar, Pakistan, to Washington, D.C., to be close to friends. But he found the city too expensive and moved to Charlotte.

“When I got here, it was big trouble to find my own food,” Khan says, referring to dishes like Pakistani-style clay-oven barbecue, curries, biryanis, pulaos, and kababs. “I’d have to go to Virginia just to find good naan. So I planned that when my family came, I would be secure, manpower-wise, to open a restaurant.”

The rest of his family left Pakistan for the U.S. in 2010, and with the help of his three sons, he opened the first Zafran Kabab Palace in Pineville the same year. He eventually sold that location to a friend, and it’s since closed. He temporarily moved the restaurant to Harrisburg but was unhappy with his lease terms there. So, in 2019, he moved to his current location, on the second floor of the McCullough Commons complex in University City.

He’s proud of his restaurant, its food, and its customers. “It’s a blessed business, in my opinion,” Riaz says. “We do exactly the dishes of Pakistan—the ingredients, the temperature, the way it’s cooked, quality, quantity, and try our best to offer the best customer service. We have a lot of respect in the community. Doctors come, professors come, businessmen. … It’s public service. If someone comes here with no money, I tell my (team), ‘Give them food; say, “Thank you” and “You are welcome here,” and don’t bother them.’”

A few hours after I leave Raiz at his desk, Zafran Kabab Palace will be packed with people breaking their fasts; the restaurant is usually table-service, but it hosts a robust buffet each evening of Ramadan.

“I happily come to my job in the morning,” he says. “I consider it as a blessing, not as a fatigue. Do you understand? … It’s a pleasure, taking care of people.” 

Mia Chang

Mia Chang

Owner of OMG Donuts & Coffee, 6209 Old Post Road, Ste. 107, and 10005 Weddington Road Ext., Concord

In 1975, Pol Pot and his Communist organization, the Khmer Rouge, seized control of Cambodia and touched off a genocide that eventually left as many as 3 million people dead. Ted Ngoy was one of thousands who fled the country that year. He settled in Orange County, California, and, less than three years later, opened his own business, a doughnut shop called Christy’s Doughnuts. Over the next decade and a half, he expanded his empire in California to about 50 shops—and provided visa sponsorships and jobs to hundreds of his fellow Cambodian refugees. In 2022, CBS News reported that around 80% of doughnut shops in Southern California are still owned by Cambodian families.

Mia Chang, owner of OMG Donuts & Coffee, emigrated from Cambodia to North Carolina as a young child. She grew up and opened a Chinese restaurant in Greensboro called Chinatown Express. (Chang identifies as Chinese Cambodian.) When she was in her 30s, a family member moved to Burlington after a decade working in Southern California doughnut shops, and he taught Chang how to make the doughnuts.

After she and her family moved to Concord to be closer to her husband’s family, she decided to open a doughnut shop rather than another restaurant that would require late nights.

“I had a young family,” Chang says, “and I wanted to be able to spend more time with them in the afternoons.”

She opened the first OMG Donuts in Concord in August 2017, in a former Quiznos sub shop. “When I came up with the name, my daughter was only 7,” Chang says, “but she said, ‘Mommy, if you’re gonna name your doughnut shop OMG Donuts, it better be good.’”

They were good enough that Chang opened a second location in Charlotte’s MoRa neighborhood in October 2021. Both locations serve a massive selection of fresh California-style yeast, cake, sourdough, and buttermilk doughnuts, popular apple fritters, and coffee drinks. Customers can select a cream or curd filling to be piped into the doughnuts after ordering. 

“When you come to America, whatever kind of business that your family or people who you know here own,” Chang says, “that’s what you get into.”

Mazali Rashshad and Khilola Pirmatov, Owners of Mazali

Rashshad and Khilola Pirmatov

Owners of Mazali, 2200 Thrift Road

The Pirmatovs, natives of the central Asian country of Uzbekistan, moved with their teenaged son and two young daughters from New York City to Charlotte in 2018. Rashshad had secured a business analyst job at Wells Fargo. But neither his background nor his future lay in banking, and the same held for his wife, Khilola, an accountant by trade. He had worked as the food and beverage manager for a hotel in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent.

Political and economic difficulties in their native country compelled them to leave in 2013. “Especially thinking about the future of the kids at that point,” Rashshad says, “we decided for their future to move to the United States to give them a better education, a better living situation.”

After five years in New York, his new job moved the family south. But his Wells Fargo contract ended in 2020, and he says a subsequent job at Bank of America overworked him. Khilola was looking for a more satisfying line of work, too. The two were already preparing traditional meals like rice-based plov and laghman, a noodle dish, for what he says is a small but growing Uzbek community in Charlotte. So he and Khilola  opened Mazali—Uzbek for “tasty”—in April 2024 at City Kitch, the low-overhead commercial kitchen in Wesley Heights that’s an incubator for food startups.

Rashshad says the family prefers Charlotte’s people and climate to New York’s, and he and Khilola hope to eventually open a brick-and-mortar restaurant. After a slow start, he says Mazali’s business is picking up—“much better than in the beginning.” 

Additional Spots to Find Great Asian Cuisine

DŌZO executive chef Perry Saito sous chef John Gamble

DŌZO

2200 Thrift Road

This 600-square-foot stall inside City Kitch has a six-seat counter and three two-top tables where diners can watch chefs prepare Okonomiyaki, Katsu-don, and Crab Fried Rice.

MOMO STATION

224 E. 7th St.

This stall inside The Market at 7th Street specializes in momos, dumplings common in northern India, Bhutan, and Nepal. 

ROYAL BIRYANI

9624 Monroe Road

It’s occupied a humble east Charlotte strip mall for eight years, and it’s mainly a takeout place. Try the fried savory pastries, a favorite South Asian snack.

SPICE ASIAN KITCHEN

251 Textile Way, Fort Mill, S.C.

The dumplings and pad thai are consistently good, but the bibimbap, bossam, and curry dishes are great, too.

BOTIWALLA

1115 N. Brevard St., Ste. 203 (Optimist Hall)

Chef Meherwan Irani’s menu is full of Indian street foods like Savory Kale Fritters, Spicy Potato Dumplings, Chicken Tikka Rolls, and Maharaja Lamb Burgers.

MOA KOREAN BBQ

128 S. Tryon St.

You can order Korean Tacos and Kimchi Bulgogi Nachos a la carte, but the tabletop barbecue is the main attraction. 

DEEJAI THAI

613 Providence Road

This family-owned eatery offers takeout, but with its modern dining room and bright patio, you’ll want to settle into a table.

OSHEN

7741 Colony Road

The family-friendly sushi restaurant from the team behind Yunta serves sushi, hibachi, and several non-seafood options.

MATCHA CAFE MAIKO

8128 Providence Road, Ste. 900

This cozy dessert shop at The Arboretum serves a variety of pastries and tea drinks, and it imports its matcha from Kyoto.

Pho Good Time Asian restaurant

PHO GOOD TIME ASIAN

2410 Park Road

While the Vietnamese noodle soup here is solid (and simmered for more than 10 hours), the dumpling station takes center stage.

BANH MI BROTHERS

230 E. W.T. Harris Blvd., Ste. A7

This fast-casual Vietnamese restaurant serves traditional banh mi sandwiches, house-made porchetta, and Pho-Tine fries.

CURRY JUNCTION

8200 Providence Road, Ste. 800

Traditional dishes and tandoori-style cuisine intersect at this south Charlotte spot.

Also see, Where To Go For Sushi in Charlotte.