Our Story
Introducing Executive Chef Mike Teng, bringing his family’s traditional Hakka Indian Style Chinese Cuisine to Levittown New York. Our specialty dishes include items such as Hakka Chili Chicken, Crispy Beef, Hakka Hot Garlic Shrimp and Pan fried chicken or vegetable Mo Mo (dumplings).
Hakka (客家),sometimes Hakka Han, are Han Chinese people whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Szechuan, Hunan, Zhejiang, Hainan and Guizhou. The Chinese characters for Hakka(客家) literally mean “guest families”.
Meet the Chef:
The Executive Chef/ owner of Teng’s Restaurant is Mike Teng, who is a Hakka/Indian Expat who has worked in the restaurant industry since he arrived on American soil in 1984. In 2005 he landed an executive chef job at a startup dine in Restaurant in Forest Hills, NY: Jade Eatery & Lounge. Eight months after the grand opening, Jade Eatery and Lounge started to gain notoriety, netting a 4 star rating in Time Out New York Magazine. From that time to 2012 Jade Eatery & Lounge established themselves as one of the top dine in Chinese restaurants in NYC. Although things were going good, Mike Teng decided to resign from his position at Jade Eatery & Lounge to focus on a less grueling venture which eventually manifested itself as successful convenience store Bayside On the Go located in Bayside, Queens, in order to spend more time with his wife Lin and three boys, Tyler, Travis, and Terence. Flash forward to 2019– Mike Teng with his children all grown up (all graduated high school) became officially ready to get back into the restaurant biz. Instead of seeking out his old job at Jade Eatery & Lounge, Mike wanted to make a bold move, so in December of 2018, he and his wife, Lin found a nice location in the beautiful town of Levittown and officially opened his own restaurant: Teng’s Restaurant on March 15, 2019. Chef Mike Teng along with his wife and three boys are ecstatic and determined to provide the people of Levittown as well as the towns nearby with a high end takeout cuisine that prioritizes quality and features the same signature Hakka dishes and sauces that the former 4 star restaurant Jade Eatery & Lounge served to the local residents of Forest hills.
*Here is a little bit of Background on Hakka Cuisine for those who were wondering, “what the heck is Hakka Cuisine?”
The Hakka people have a marked cuisine and style of Chinese cooking which is little known outside the Hakka home. It concentrates on the texture of food – the hallmark of Hakka cuisine. In fact, the raw materials for Hakka food are no different from raw materials for any other type of regional Chinese cuisine where what is cooked depends on what is available in the market. Hakka cuisine may be described as outwardly simple but tasty. The skill in Hakka cuisine lies in the ability to cook meat thoroughly without hardening it, and to naturally bring out the proteinous flavour (umami taste) of meat.
Learning about Hakka Cuisine at Teng’s:
By Rob Patrone on Sept 27th, 2019
An Emmy Award Winner host for Fios1 Restaurant-Hunter, a well known food show on Long Island, Rob Petrone Goes Inside Levittown Eatery’s Kitchen at Teng’s Restaurant. Located at 2936 Hempstead Turnpike, NY.
