More than thirty years ago, Si Jie arrived in the United States. She had no grand plan. Like many people who had just landed here, she simply wanted to make a living with her own two hands, and to live well.
That turned into more than thirty years. In all that time she has barely left the restaurant business — from the rush of the kitchen line to running a dining room, from the taste of a single dish to the health of a whole business, from finding her feet at the beginning to starting over, again and again. She has worked through the busiest services a restaurant can have, and she has been through the rise and fall of trade. There was hard work, there were setbacks, and there was the particular kind of persistence that only people who have actually done this job understand.
But after more than thirty years, one thing has never changed: Si Jie still takes the simple act of eating a meal seriously.
If a dish is not right, she really will keep changing it
What most guests see is the plate that finally reaches the table. What they do not see is how many times it was made before that. If the flavour is not good enough, she makes it again. If the recipe is not right, she adjusts it. If the heat is wrong, she tries again. If the plating is not beautiful enough, she starts over.
Sometimes it is only a passing comment from a guest — "if you adjusted this a little, it might be better" — and she will keep it in mind. Next time, she tries again.
Because to Si Jie, a guest walking into a restaurant, sitting down and giving you a meal's worth of their time is already a kind of trust. That trust cannot be treated casually. She does not want guests to finish and think, "that was fine." What she would rather hear is: "that was genuinely good — I'll come back." For someone who has been doing this for more than thirty years, that sentence is still the thing that makes her happiest.
From Special Noodle to Yu by Si Jie
In 2021, Special Noodle opened. For Si Jie, that was not the finish line. In the years since she has kept learning and kept changing. She has seen more excellent restaurants, tried new dishes and new methods, and grown steadily clearer about the kind of restaurant she actually wanted to run.
After more than thirty years in this trade, if one day I could do it entirely my own way — what would I want it to be?
The answer slowly came into focus. And so there is now Yu by Si Jie.
This time, she decided to put her own name into the brand. Because this restaurant is not just a new name. It represents a higher standard she has set for herself after more than thirty years of restaurant life.
She did not set out to build an expensive restaurant
Si Jie has eaten in a great many good restaurants, and has spent years studying why the best ones stay in your memory. She has come to believe that genuinely fine dining is not only about costly ingredients and beautiful plating. It should be about seriousness towards flavour, insistence on detail, and a sense of respect the guest feels from the moment they walk through the door.
So Yu by Si Jie set itself a goal that looks simple and is not easy to reach: to keep improving with the attitude of a restaurant learning from Michelin standards, to hold flavour and service to a higher bar, and at the same time to keep prices that are fair and worth paying.
Si Jie has always believed that good food should not be a pleasure reserved for a few. Refined flavour, good ingredients, a beautiful room and attentive service can also be the setting for a meal an ordinary family is happy to return to, and where friends are glad to gather.
This time, she built the restaurant herself, piece by piece
What is most unusual about Yu by Si Jie may not be in the kitchen at all. For this new restaurant, Si Jie took part personally in the whole design and build-out of the space. Not simply telling someone else "this is the style I want," but genuinely thinking it through, designing it herself, and even doing the work with her own hands.
- Should the lighting be brighter, or dimmer?
- Where will guests be most comfortable sitting?
- How should tables and chairs be arranged so the room looks good without feeling crowded?
- How should the kitchen be laid out so the cooks can work smoothly?
- Once a dish leaves the kitchen, what is the fastest and best route to the guest?
Down to a single corner, a single lamp, a single wall, she would turn it over again and again. During the hardest stretch of the build, she was not standing to one side watching other people work — she was on site herself, doing it bit by bit.
Some might ask: after more than thirty years in restaurants, why take on that much work? Because for Si Jie, what she was building was not only a restaurant. She was making, with her own hands, a place she had waited many years for — a work that genuinely belongs to her.
From a wall to a dish
A great deal of Yu by Si Jie carries her own mark. The space was thought out step by step, the restaurant built step by step, the menu tested dish by dish, the flavours adjusted round after round. Even which plate a dish is served on, and how it is arranged, is something she considers carefully.
Because what she wants is for guests walking into Yu by Si Jie to feel more than "this place is nicely decorated." She wants a complete experience: from the first glance at the door to the room you see once you sit down; from a server's first greeting to the aroma of the first dish arriving; from the first mouthful to the last. She wants every detail to be worthy of a guest choosing to eat here.
Thirty years on, she is still the same Si Jie who cooks carefully
Time has changed a great deal. The American restaurant market has changed, guests' tastes have changed, fashionable restaurants have come in wave after wave. Si Jie herself has gone from a young woman newly arrived in America with everything to start over, through more than thirty years.
But when she walks into the kitchen, she is still the same Si Jie. See a dish she is not satisfied with and she still frowns; if the flavour is slightly off she still asks for it to be adjusted; when a guest says it is good she is still pleased; when a guest offers an opinion she still listens properly.
Because more than thirty years in restaurants taught her something very simple: a restaurant can bring a guest through the door the first time with publicity, but what brings guests back again and again is always flavour, service and sincerity.
Why the name Yu by Si Jie?
"by Si Jie" stands for more than a name. It is closer to a signature — like a maker writing their own name at the end of their work.
The name means this: this is a meal Si Jie is willing to put her own name behind. From ingredients to flavour; from the room to the service; from the kitchen to the table. Behind it is the judgement built up over more than thirty years in this trade, and her promise to every guest.
Yu by Si Jie is not simply opening another restaurant
For Si Jie, this is more like setting out again after more than thirty years. Cooking when she was young was, perhaps, mostly about making a living; making Yu by Si Jie today, what she wants to leave behind is different. She wants to put everything she has learned, lived through and held onto over these years into this restaurant.
She wants guests to come here without having to carry the unreachable price that so-called "fine dining" usually implies, and still eat food that was made with care, feel service that pays attention, and sit in a comfortable, beautiful room with family and friends, and have a good meal together.
More than thirty years behind one meal
So when you come to Yu by Si Jie, what you are eating is not only a dish. You are eating one woman's more than thirty years in the American restaurant industry; flavours readjusted after countless failures; a new understanding of what "delicious" means, arrived at through learning again and again; and the seriousness that someone who has cooked for more than thirty years still has not lost.
This time she designed it herself, built it herself, developed the dishes herself, and turned the restaurant she had held in her mind for many years into something real, piece by piece.
She never set out to tell a legendary story. She only wanted to keep doing the one thing she knows best: cooking one meal properly.