Zhen Kitchen: A Chinese family's restaurant legacy in Doha

Doha, Qatar – About 20 years ago, in a land far far away, a young Ma Zhong Yan decided to leave Shenyang, China, to make her fortune in the world. She wanted a new start for herself, her husband Zhang Bin and her daughter Zhang Jia Ni.

So she talked to a friend, whom she still refers to as her “sister”, and together they decided they would try their luck in the United States, they had heard many success stories from there. The next step was to speak to an agent who arranged work visas, so they found a guy who knew a guy who knew an agent, and a conversation was had. Everything was agreed, and the agent said he would get them visas to the US asap.

But things rarely work to plan, and the agent could only get visas to a place they had never heard of before: Doha, Qatar.

Today, sitting in her restaurant in Doha’s West Bay, Zhong Yan says she’s still not sure how that happened, a soft smile on her gentle face that glows in the afternoon sun. But, she says, cradling a cup of green tea, she’s glad things worked out the way they did. Even considering the pain of having to leave her husband and daughter behind so she could go start a new life for them.

They’re both here with her and Zhong Yan is coming to the restaurant less often, taking a bit of time to herself now that Jia Ni has taken over managing it while Zhang Bin oversees operations in the kitchen.

She came in specially to speak to us and looks relaxed, sitting next to our friend Grace who has come to dinner to help translate. The cosy setup makes us feel like we’re visiting her at home rather than at the family’s newest venture, Zhen Street Kitchen. This is their second act after they had to close their first restaurant – a cult favourite among those Dohaites in the know – Playstation Cafeteria.

As you may have noted, Playstation Cafeteria is an unusual name for a Chinese restaurant. Legend has it that it wasn’t Playstation Cafeteria at first, that was the name of the gaming shop next door. Because so many patrons used the gaming shop to mark the spot, Zhong Yan decided to go with what her regulars were calling the place.

She chuckles as she remembers the old shop, telling Grace that she and Playstation Cafeteria were so famous that Chinese television had come to Doha and done a reportage about them. As Jia Ni shows us the news report on her phone, Zhong Yan calmly instructs the restaurant staff on how to arrange the table.

A generous platter of dumplings makes its way out to us, much to our joy. Playstation Cafeteria was known for its tasty dumplings and Zhong Yan prides herself on never skimping on the portions. Groups of friends would start off many an evening by coming to Playstation Cafeteria to share a couple of orders of dumplings, a hotpot, and a few other dishes, selected from a 15-page menu of temptations.

A second platter of dumplings arrives because we, of course, want to try both the beef and seafood. They’re nicely crisp on the bottom and pillowy soft on top, breaking open to reveal the savoury filling that Zhong Yan became famous for and hasn’t changed for years.

They are also completely devoid of artifice, there’s no obsessive branding of the bottoms to make the crispy parts uniform, nor was there a tweezer anywhere near them when they were plated, each one rests chubbily on whichever side works best for it. They’re welcoming, not complicated as so many meals in 5-star hotel restaurants tend to be. Plus, in our humble opinion, they are much tastier.

Another famous dish is the stir-fried morning glory, a glistening green mound, anointed with just enough garlic, oil and seasonings. Chopsticks out, we help ourselves to dumplings and morning glory, grateful that they have survived the move from Playstation Cafeteria to the Zhen Street Kitchen menu.

There is a new addition, which we are happy to report has become permanent: the crispy eggplants. Crisp strips of battered eggplant in a loose heap, drizzled with a spicy-sweet sauce and studded with bits of fried dry chillis and torn fresh coriander. Crunching through the tempura-like skin reveals buttery eggplant inside that lands on the tongue at the same time as the zingy sauce. And if you’re lucky, you’ll catch one of those equally crisp shreds of chilli pepper.

Did Zhong Yan always plan to set up a restaurant when she left China? The short answer is no – her husband used to be the chef back in China while she had a background in traditional Chinese medicine. But, like many expats, one of the first things she missed when she got to Doha was food from home, which she was able to make for herself and her friend at home and at work when they were hired as general help by a Chinese company.

She did all sorts of jobs after that, spending a couple of years as a nanny with a family in Doha and another few years at a Chinese medicine clinic where, she said with a smile, she was able to use her training.

Five years after she arrived, in 2006, she was able to bring her husband Bin to Doha and they set to save up some more until Jia Ni turned 19 and they were able to have her join them in Doha, where she got a job with the Chinese embassy.

Then, in 2011, Zhong Yan found the space that became Playstation Cafeteria and decided to set up shop. They weren’t easy years. She and Bin worked hard to make a success of the simple space, with its red interior illuminated by fluorescent lights, plastic-covered tables, branded soft drink coolers and mismatched chairs. It felt like every mom-and-pop restaurant ever, and she was there every day, hustling.

We tell Zhong Yan their food is better than what we’ve had at most other Chinese restaurants in Doha, what do they do here that the others haven’t managed to do?

To answer that question, she looks to Bin, who has finished supervising in the kitchen and had come out to join us. A man of few words, he speaks calmly then retreats into his quiet smile. “Freshness and authenticity,” Grace translates for us. The other places are chasing a more generic idea of “Chinese food” and end up losing themselves.

Is it a matter of not finding the right ingredients? No, Bin says, and yes. While they had to make a lot of substitutions in the early days and ask people to bring ingredients in their luggage, they still turned out food that was authentic to its roots and character. These days, they can request any ingredients they want from local Asian food importers, so things are a lot easier but it’s still a matter of being faithful to your cuisine.

A look at the menu shows what Bin means, Zhen Street Kitchen serves up all the good stuff, chicken feet, lamb tripe, beef tripe, beef trotters, and more. This is the food of their northeastern region, true tail to snout eating, perfectly seasoned and adorned with chillis.

After all these years of hard work, do Bin and Zhong Yan miss northeastern China and are they looking forward to going back for their retirement? Bin is totally ready, he says, he’s tired and feels he’s worked hard enough for long enough. Zhong Yan is less sure, thinking she’ll probably miss the place and will worry a little bit about Jia Ni, who she hopes will meet a nice man and get married so she can be “truly settled” in Doha.

Jia Ni laughs her mother’s comment away as she walks to the table with a small plate of barbecued meat skewers. She wants her parents to rest and take some time for themselves, she says, especially after the past few years during which the COVID lockdowns forced them to close Playstation Cafeteria and they had to start a catering contract for the Chinese technology giant Huawei in Doha. Between those changes and the work that went into getting Zhen Streen Kitchen ready to open, there has been a lot going on and she feels her parents deserve to rest a bit.

Well, they deserve to rest a bit, but just after they help her set up her latest idea for a new eatery in Doha, an individual hotpot restaurant where it’s not necessary to gather a big gang in order to have hotpot. She just needs them to help her set it up, she clarifies hurriedly, there will be a head chef for the place and her parents won’t need to do the cooking there or anything, just be with her while she gets it set up. Chuckles go around the table along with murmurs about how a parent’s support is invaluable, no matter how old the child is.

The murmuring continues, but now it’s more about the barbecued meat, which is piping hot, perfectly done, and sprinkled with a slightly dazzling mix of spices that worked perfectly with the three meats – lamb, beef and chicken. We taste cumin in there, and there’s definitely that tingling that Szechuan peppers bring, but is there also sugar in that mix? We can’t tell and, needless to say, Jia Ni and her parents didn’t really want to explain too much.

While we were indulging in barbecue, a hotplate had been set up and a gorgeous yin-yang pot of broths is brought out, one side placidly white and calm while the other, deep red, side roils with dried chillis and Szechuan peppercorns. Around the pot on the hotplate are all the things that make hotpot fun: kelp, button mushrooms, wood-ear mushrooms, tofu, napa cabbage, rolls of thinly sliced beef, and chicken luncheon meat. The fun part was about to begin.

As we dip various things into the bubbling pots of broth and mix our little bowls of dipping sauce from the tray of options set out for us, we’re taught a bit about chopstick etiquette – never put them upright into a bowl of rice or noodles or anything really, turn them and use the back end to serve yourself if there are no serving chopsticks, and holding them so your hand is further away from the eating end is more elegant.

Of course, once we learn about elegant chopstick use, we start dropping things in the hotpot a lot more frequently, resulting in some satisfying splashes and lots of laughter.

Our raucous enjoyment of the meal isn’t out of place at Zhen Street Kitchen. All around us are tables of families and groups of friends, mostly Chinese, who seemed to be engaged in doing exactly the same thing, only with better chopstick skills than ours and what seemed to be an even more delicious selection of dishes as we looked around, filled with restaurant FOMO (fear of missing out).

Zhong Yan explains to Grace that their restaurants have always attracted the Chinese community in Doha, and that’s something they’re very proud of. Back in 2011, there were a lot more Chinese people here, in the tens of thousands, but that number dwindled over the years and has only recently started to rise again.

Were their regulars only Chinese? Not at all, all three of them said, there were people from many places who became their regulars at one time or another: Japan, Korea, France, Spain, the US, the UK, and the Philippines. Filipino people, Bin said, were huge fans of hotpot, something he seems to appreciate greatly, in his understated way.

Another group that is fond of hotpot? The Chinese ping-pong team, who dropped in for a meal whenever they were in Doha, Zhong Yan giggled. They had heard about Zhong Yan and her family and wanted to stop in and get some of those homey meals, just like everyone else in Zhen Street Kitchen that day.