The owners of Monkey King Noodle Co. don't plan on leaving Deep Ellum. They're simply looking to expand, so they're joining fellow Deep Ellum neighbor, pizza place Cane Rosso, and opening a new location in Carrollton.
Monkey King Noodle Co. 2.0 is expected to open in downtown Carrollton, on Broadway Street, in summer 2016. The restaurant will sell Asian-style noodle soup and dumplings, plus a few new items such as potstickers and wok-fried seasonal vegetables.
There's one big differentiator from the original Monkey King to the new one: ample seating.
The Monkey King Noodle Co. in Deep Ellum is mostly a standing-room-only kind of place, with a few chairs that get quickly snatched up. On busy days, diners can be seen sitting on their trunks -- or in the trunk of SUVs, back hatch open -- while they slurp bowls of noodles.
The original Monkey King opened in fall 2013 and became lauded for its housemade noodles. The street food stand opened at a time when Asian-style noodle shops were both trendy and relatively new in Dallas.
(Dallas Morning News contributor Kim Pierce said of Monkey King in early 2014: "Two trends -- Dallas' noodle mania and Deep Ellum's most recent revival -- intersect near the corner of Main and Hall streets at Monkey King Noodle Co.")
Carrollton Senior Development Manager Peter Braster hopes Carrollton's Monkey King lures people to downtown Carrollton in the evenings and on weekends. Some of the neighboring restaurants in downtown Carrollton will be a Cane Rosso pizza shop, Babe's Chicken Dinner House and Twisted Root burger house.
