Black Dragon Takeout: A Bold Experiment in Flavor Fusion
Don’t come to Black Dragon Takeout hoping for Chinese takeout or quintessential soul food — come in expecting the unexpected.
A variety of dishes from Black Dragon Takeout. / Photograph by Paolo Jay Agbay
Black Dragon Takeout is a place born of food deserts and demographic change. Local chef and activist Kurt Evans knew that Chinese takeout was often the only place to get a fast, hot meal in many Black American communities. He also knew that a lot of these shops were closing — second-generation kids of immigrant parents unwilling to take over the family business. So Evans opened a Black American Chinese shop with collard green eggrolls on the menu and high-saturation photos of plates of General Roscoe’s chicken and sweet potato doughnuts on the wall above a short takeout counter.
On paper, it seems so smart.
But in practice, there’s a problem. Soul food is about comfort, Chinese takeout is about predictability, and both have certain expectations of flavor and texture worked into the cultural architecture of each dish. So a fusion of these two cuisines — a combination of Chinese technique and format with Black diaspora flavors in every single dish — removes 100 percent of that comfort, and all that remains to fill the expectation gap is an element of surprise — a new understanding of how old flavors can work together in new ways.
But when you do it right? That’s when you get something like Black Dragon’s rangoon with sweet Maryland crab and stinging pimento cheese stuffed inside those crispy deep-fried shells. Or fried chicken fried rice that’s soy-heavy and simple but also warm and easy, studded with big chunks of fried chicken and served in a portion easily large enough to feed two. You get to-go boxes of big-ass fried battered shrimp, dripping with a brilliant and deeply savory-sweet chili-spiked sweet potato sauce that I’d drink by the bottle, and all of it — all of it, even when you’ve read the menu and know it’s coming — is a surprise.
The danger here is in expectation. If sweet and sour chicken is what you’re craving, if you’re dying for jerk chicken the way you know it, then this probably isn’t your spot. But if you’re looking for something new? Something different? If you’re willing to take a ride with Evans and see where his vision takes you, then there are good times to be found at Black Dragon.
They just might not be the ones you expect.
2 Stars — Come if you’re in the neighborhood
Rating Key
0 stars: stay away
★: come if you have no other options
★★: come if you’re in the neighborhood
★★★: come from anywhere in Philly
★★★★: come from anywhere in America
Published as “Enter the Black Dragon” in the December 2024/January 2025 issue of Philadelphia magazine.
