Today's Case:
Shophouse Southeast Asian Kitchen
Re: Shophouse,Southeast Asian Kitchen
From: Amy
To: Phaedrus
Date: 12/23/2024, 8:46 AM
On 12/22/2024 7:34 PM, Amy wrote:
Dear Uncle Phaedrus,
Chipotle used to have a chain of restaurants called Shophouse
Southeast Asian Kitchen. One of their standout items were these
delicious chicken-pork meatballs. I've been trying to recreate the
recipe for years. The restaurant chain closed years ago unfortunately.
Would you be able to help? Any assistance would be greatly
appreciated. The copycat recipes I've found online were sadly unable
to get anywhere near the original taste.
Thank you, and kind regards,
Amy
Hello Amy,
Shophouse Southeast Asian Kitchen was a venture of Chipotle Mexican Grill that served Asian food similarly to the way Chipotle serves Mexican food. From the comments about it that are online, it's kind of surprising that it only lasted from 2011 to 2017. Retrospective comments say it failed due to low customer repeatability, but I wonder if the decision to close the 14 shops wasn't a bit hasty. Many people seem to have loved their food, particularly those pork & chicken meatballs.
The Shophouse menu described them like this:
Pork & Chicken Meatballs
Responsibly Raised® pork and chicken mixed with fresh herbs and roasted until golden brown
I had no success finding the actual Shophouse recipe, nor did I find a recipe that had any provenance that was traceable to Shophouse or to a former Shophouse employee.
These are probably the same recipes that you have already tried, but they are all that I could find:
Shophouse Meatball Recipe
Chicken & Pork Meatballs with Sriracha
Shophouse Meatball Bowl Copycat Recipe
I will post this for reader input.
Phaed
Dear Phaedrus,
Thank you very much for your fast response. I've tried those recipes
and they don't really come close to the original, but maybe other
readers will have some helpful information.
Thanks again!
