Notable LA Chef Chef Shirley Chung Brings Night Rooster to Dallas’ Design District

<p>Night Rooster, the long-awaited modern Chinese fine dining restaurant from Hooper Hospitality Concepts, opens January 31 in the Dallas Design District, marking a powerful new beginning for Chef Shirley Chung. The Beijing-born, Los Angeles–honed chef, known nationally from Top Chef and Food Network, calls this her most personal project yet—a refined expression of Chinese cuisine shaped by Texas ingredients, deep friendships, and survival.

Night Rooster sits on the first floor of 1000 N. Riverfront Boulevard, beneath Hooper Hospitality’s acclaimed Italian steakhouse, The Saint. The new restaurant’s story is as much about rebirth as it is about collaboration. “Shirley and I have talked about building something together for over twenty years,” said Andy Hooper, founder of Hooper Hospitality Concepts. “Night Rooster tells a story—of friendship, perseverance, and starting fresh—and we’re incredibly proud to bring that story to life.”

That story begins long before Dallas. After moving from Beijing to the U.S. at seventeen, Chung graduated from the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco and worked with some of the world’s most celebrated chefs, including Thomas Keller at Bouchon, Guy Savoy, and José Andrés, with whom she opened the James Beard–nominated China Poblano. She later ran CarneVino in Las Vegas before settling in Los Angeles, where she became known as the “Dumpling Queen” through her restaurants Twenty Eight Modern Chinese and Ms Chi Café. The Los Angeles Times hailed her for reimagining Chinese-American cuisine with wit and precision—blending culinary memory, California ingredients, and modern craft into dishes that feel at once nostalgic and fresh.

In 2024, her life took an unexpected turn. Diagnosed with stage IV squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue, Chung faced an almost certain end to her cooking career. She chose intensive chemotherapy and radiation over radical surgery, and after months of treatment, emerged cancer-free. That fight reshaped her outlook. “After everything I’ve been through, I can’t begin to say enough about how happy I am to be cooking again,” she says. “I hope this restaurant will be fi