Food truck is a nood dawn for the Michelin-recognized chefs of Red Panda Noodle | Review
If Orlando’s food scene had a yearbook, and “Chefs Most Likely to Bail Post-Michelin Nod” were a thing active foodies could vote for, Seth Parker and Eliot Hillis would probably have been the odds-on favorites. But that doesn’t mean such recognition wasn’t a cherished feather in their collective culinary cap.
“It was one of our life goals to be Michelin-rated,” says Hillis, who spoke openly, one year ago, about how much being a part of Orlando’s inaugural selection meant to him.
Chefs on life after Michelin: “On so many levels, it matters”
But just a couple of weeks after that story ran in the Sentinel, Hillis and Parker announced they’d be leaving the lauded home they’d built at Orlando Meats to brave the elements beneath a basic pop-up tent, to endure the heat and sweat of the summer and their own fiery woks to bring the dream of Red Panda Noodle to life.
“At the end of the day, we weren’t happy doing what we were doing,” he says of the business that brought them accolades, awards and swarms of customers clamoring for their famed Medium-Rare Burger. “It rings hollow to make a million dollars for something you really hate.”
Red Panda, on the other hand, is all love, all the time. It is the first venture, says Hillis, that is “completely of their own invention.” That includes the swanky new truck they debuted back in April.
“Everything about Red Panda Noodle is set up for our comfort, our success.” That’s literal inside the mobile kitchen, where the line is custom-built for how the pair works; even their heights were a factor. It’s one of the reasons, he says, it’s been difficult to find team members to replace them. Hillis chuckles at his own observation: “A little short-sighted on our part.”
Some of the dishes selling out on the reg have been ideas on their scratch pad since 2016. New ones keep coming.
The cumin beef ($16), as colorful as it is face-numbing and laden with tender slices of cured N.Y. Strip over lo mein-style noodles, had its coming-out party at a recent Tasty Takeover event with a stellar response.
Fans of the city’s beloved Chuan Lu Garden will feel the love for the original in this dish, which employs modern methodologies, including the application of atmospheric pressure during the dough-making process, “but it’s still a straight portal into what you could eat 300 years ago in the Sichuan Valley.”
Best Chinese: 2023 Orlando Sentinel Foodie Awards
Everything old is new, though. It was a hit straight away. But if it needed tweaks, the truck allows for max flexibility with its instant response mechanisms. “One of the greatest things about this whole endeavor is that it’s an experimentation in customer feedback. We’re able to change anything. If it doesn’t sell, it goes. If it does really well, we make more of it.”
Pork, for example, wasn’t moving and got bounced for the time being. Chicken and beef, on the other hand, soar. Proteins aside, it’s important to note that every single one of Red Panda’s dishes is vegan if you 86 the meat. In fact, RPN was a vegan concept at its outset. That foundation hasn’t changed.
Plant-based diners can partake of the Goomba ($15), vegan right off the menu with its wonderfully meaty king trumpet mushrooms, snappy mustard greens and tangy black vinegar-infused toss, but you can add meat for a few extra bucks.
Despite Parker and Hillis’ butcher-shop notoriety, there’s no irony here. It’s just the way things fell at the outset.
“The noodles were vegan, most of the sauces were naturally vegan, we didn’t have any drive or need to put protein in it other than the desire of people, so we gave it to them.”
They are a giving twosome when it comes to the hungry masses, though “masses” might be generous. Red Panda Noodle has been a sensation with more adventurous eaters and heat seekers (those toothy Biang Biang noodles, $15 and also vegan as-is, are edible, chili crisp-slathered fire), of which there are more than enough to fill the truck’s coffers handily, but Hillis and Parker’s off-center creations have always been sort of niche-y.
“We represent a very intense microcosm,” he says.
Maybe it’s because I’m in it, but for the life of me, I don’t get why. Sure, the incendiary Biang Biang isn’t for everyone, but the udon-centered Bourbon Chicken ($15) is the stuff of the free samples in heaven’s food court.
And the Garlic Noodles ($15), with black garlic and scape and scallion and more melding flavors amid extruded, figure 8-style pasta, are an experience I’d classify as romantic. Decadent, delicious and dynamic on the palate, they’re how the most dramatic of vampires would choose to end the ennui of their immortality.
“We love these dishes,” says Hillis. “Most of them were made so we could impress our loved ones. My father. My girlfriend. Seth’s girlfriend. My mom… That’s the reality of it, that we’re cooking for people who make up the whole of us. Each (is representative) of a certain subsection.”
Take the chicken skewers ($9), for example, an evolution of the gochujang-sweet-and-sticky wings Red Panda was proffering at their outset. The recipe began as a labor of longing for the wings that Mills 50’s Shin Jung Korean BBQ no longer had on the menu.
“But then they became a challenge because my girlfriend really loved the chicken skewers from Empire Szechuan and I was not going to be okay with letting her love somebody else’s chicken skewers more than mine,” he says, laughing.
Fans shouldn’t feel totally left out, though; the skewers themselves were a change triggered by that aforementioned instant feedback.
“People were saying they were too messy to handle the bones, so we got rid of the bones and added skewers.”
They are ample — at two to a serving, they are eminently shareable. Finish both, and the drizzle of zingy “mystery ranch” might command it, and you will surely be too full for noods. I’m not the biggest ranch fan and think of this alluring condiment — with its black vinegar-fermented black bean sauce foundation — as the anti-ranch. A saucy version of goateed Spock, if you will.
I’m hardly Vulcan about the food here, though. Like the chefs themselves and their ardent fans, I have strong feelings.
This year, I might write the Red Panda guys in for “Best Couple.”
If you go
Red Panda Noodle: redpandanoodle.com; instagram.com/redpandanoodle,facebook.com/redpandanoodle.
Want to reach out? Find me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram at @amydroo or on the OSFoodie Instagram account @orlando.foodie. Email: amthompson@orlandosentinel.com. For more foodie fun, join the Let’s Eat, Orlando Facebook group.
