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Restaurateur George Chen’s latest project, a massive food emporium at Santa Clara’s Westfield Valley Fair celebrating pan-Asian flavors, is somewhat of a full-circle moment.
Chen opened his first restaurant, Betelnut, in San Francisco in 1995, serving cuisine from Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Shanghai, Malaysia and Japan.
Thirty years and 17 restaurants later, Chen’s focus has been on China Live, a Chinese food emporium in San Francisco’s Chinatown with two full-service restaurants. Now, Chen is once again returning to the flavors of broader Asia with his newest project, Asia Live, which he and his wife Cindy Wong-Chen expect to open in the fall.
Asia Live, located in the former two-story, 13,000-square-foot iChina space, will have a marketplace, cafe, full-service restaurant, bar, an outdoor patio overlooking Santana Row and a rooftop terrace with a panoramic view.
The cafe on the first floor will offer grab-and-go items like Taiwanese mango shave ice and black sesame soft serve, as well as China Live’s signature Peking duck pockets. An open kitchen will include sushi and robata (Japanese barbecue) stations, tandoori ovens and an Indonesian rice table. Food items will be seasonally rotating, and there will be multiple seating areas and bars for drinks, light bites, lunch or dinner.
“What we try to bring is the encompassing, interactive dining, so you’re not just there for the food, but you’re there to share an experience with your friends,” Chen said.
Born in Taiwan, Chen began his culinary journey in California at the age of 15 and worked at 12 restaurants throughout high school and college. At one point in his career, Chen owned 11 restaurants in the Bay Area.
He signed the lease for China Live in 2013 and opened it in 2017 with the goal of changing people’s perspectives on Chinese food, which he said is often thought of as cheap and unhealthy.
“People perceive Chinese food as just coming out of a wok. That’s not true,” Chen said. “I want to show that Chinese food…has the diversity and the cooking techniques, and is not just dishes that come out of a white box.”
Chen hopes that Asia Live adds an educational experience to dining, teaching guests about the origin and history of the dishes. From his perspective, authenticity in cuisine can be interpreted in multiple ways. (“That’s a word for what your grandmother makes,” he said.)
At Asia Live, the food will be authentic “in that it’s interpreted with a keen eye to the culinary background and history as a cuisine,” he said, but the cuisine will also be interpreted in a more modern way.
“We’re in California. We’re here to interpret,” Chen said. “Look at Silicon Valley. Everybody’s inventing things. We’ve been eating food for millennia, and food technique has gotten a lot better, and there are many ways to make food delicious and still maintain the essence of the history and culture of that cuisine.”
Chen said he looked at over 300 potential expansion projects before deciding to debut his Asia Live concept at Valley Fair, a decision impacted by its close proximity to China Live as well as his good relationship with Westfield. Chen has plans to open an Asia Live in Paris, in a 35,000-square-foot space at the Carrousel du Louvre underneath the pyramid.
“We know each other very well, and they love our concept,” Chen said. “They think we’re like the Asian Eataly or the Chinese Eataly.”
Chen also has projects in the works in New York’s upper Midtown and in San Francisco, which is at least two years away from completion, he said.
“I don’t want to just over-expand and collapse,” Chen said. “I’ve done that before in my younger days…I don’t want to make that mistake again.”
Asia Live, 2855 Stevens Creek Blvd., #1891, Santa Clara. Opening this fall.
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