They’re here! 🐎🔥 The Met x Junzi Year of the Horse Chili Oil Gift Boxes are now available at the Met Store. Pick up yours at 1000 5th Ave and take a piece of flavor home. 🌶️🏛️ Every purchase supports the Met’s collection, study, conservation, and presentation of 5,000 years of art. 📜🏺📚 While you’re there, don’t forget to check out the original Sancai artworks on view. ✨
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#metropolitanmuseumofart #themetstore #chilioil #yearofthehorse #junzikitchen
💌 10 years ago, Junzi began as a late-night idea from students who wanted better Chinese food on campus. Today, it’s a community table that has grown with friends, neighbors, and countless bowls shared along the way.
As we celebrate our 10-year anniversary, here’s a letter from our co-founders, Wanting & Yong, looking back at where we started and what lies ahead. Thank you for being part of the journey—we couldn’t have made it here without you. 🥢💛
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#10yearsofjunzi #junzikitchen #forstudentsbystudents #communitytable #collegeeats #nycfoodie #newhaveneats
🌱Did you know, the earliest documented references to mung bean sprouts (豆芽) trace back to the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE)?! The agricultural and botanical text Qimin Yaoshu (6th century, Northern Wei, but compiling much earlier practices) includes descriptions of sprouting beans already as a codified household technique. 🪴
👩🌾Sprouting beans was a practical solution to an everyday problem: how to access fresh, living micro greens during winter or in times of scarcity. Dried mung beans store well, and with just water and darkness, they transform within days into crisp, nutrient-rich sprouts. In Chinese cooking, sprouted grains and beans are considered as both nourishment and tonic, valued for their cooling properties in traditional Chinese medicine and their ability to “clear heat” from the body. 🧘♀️
💚At junzi kitchen, we cook our bean sprouts using a technique called flash stir-fry. Super high heat for under 30 seconds to take off the raw edge (断生) while keeping their natural crunch. 🔥We finish with just a pinch of salt, white pepper, and a touch of white vinegar to round out the flavor. The goal is simple: preserve the texture, maximize the freshness, and let the ingredient speak for itself. Now you know.🫶
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#beansprout #mungbean #foodculture #agriculture #junzikitchen
🐹✨ Chiikawa characters if they ordered at junzi. Tell us in the comments if we got a little too accurate 👀🍜
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#chiikawa #usagi #hachiware #noodlelover #junzikitchen
🌸 Happy Mother’s Day from junzi. Some of our earliest recipes didn’t start in a professional kitchen. They started on a Skype call with mom.
🎓Back at Yale, our founders were international students doing what international students do: missing home, and trying to recreate it. We called our moms to walk us through the tomato egg recipe. We tested noodles in the basement. We invited professors, TAs, neighbors, and anyone who would show up to taste what we were building. That little noodle bar prototype at Yale Entrepreneur Institute became the first junzi menu. And a lot of it started because someone was homesick, picked up the phone, and asked their mom how to do it right. 📞🍅🥚
💚To every mom who has ever talked their kid through a recipe from thousands of miles away, this one’s for you. We love you.
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#momsday #mothersday #homecooking #foodlover #junzikitchen
🌿 Establishment of Summer (立夏) is the 7th solar term of the Chinese calendar. It marks the official arrival of summer. Not by temperature alone, but by the state of the land. Crops have taken root. Days grow longer. Everything planted in spring begins to show itself above the soil. 🌾☀️ In traditional Chinese food culture, 立夏 is also the time to start eating lighter. Less heavy stews, more fresh and cooling bowls. Giving the body a chance to ease into the warmth of the months ahead. At Junzi, our menu moves with the seasons. That’s not a trend. That’s just how Chinese cooking has always worked. 🥒🌽 So this season, we’re spotlighting our Mandarin Chicken Salad 桔子鸡肉沙拉.🍊 Crisp greens, chilled bok choy, sweet mandarin oranges, honey sesame dressing. Light, fresh, and right on time.🌞 Summer is here. Your bowl knows it:)
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#summer #summertime #summerfood #chinesefoodlover #junzkitchen
🌽Corn wasn’t always part of the Chinese table.🌽 It began thousands of miles away, first cultivated in Mesoamerica, and arrived in China in the 16th century during a time of rapid global exchange. 🚢 As European powers expanded overseas, Spanish and Portuguese trade networks carried crops like corn, sweet potatoes, and peanuts across continents. Alongside goods, these routes also moved systems of power, reshaping food cultures around the world. 🥢🍴
By the 16th century, during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), corn had entered China through coastal trade routes and gradually moved inland.🔍 What made it stay was not luxury, but resilience. Corn grows where rice cannot. It thrives in dry soil, on hillsides, in places with limited water. For many communities in northern and southwestern China, it became a dependable staple, supporting everyday meals and local food systems.📍
😋Over time, it blended into regional cooking in its own way: ground into cornmeal for porridge and steamed breads, mixed with rice in Yunnan highland cooking, roasted whole over open flames on the street, stirred into home-style dishes for a touch of sweetness
🍜Today, corn feels familiar. Almost native. At Junzi, we think about these journeys often. That’s why a simple corn topping in your bowl carries more than just sweetness. It brings a light, juicy pop and a long history of how ingredients travel and take root.🥗
🌮And as Cinco de Mayo comes around, a day rooted in Mexican history, where corn remains at the heart of the table. It’s a reminder that this ingredient connects cultures across continents.
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#foodculture #foodhistory #corn #cincodemayo #junzikitchen
HUGE thank you to @junzikitchen and their co-founders Yong Zhao and Wanting Zhang for catering our launch event last week! The bowls were CHOWED down.
Yong Zhao and Wanting Zhang are Yale alumni and founded Junzi in 2015. The first location was at 21 Broadway, which is the same storefront that serves Yale students on the daily!!
Good food doesn’t begin at noon. Running a restaurant isn’t just what happens during service. It’s every early morning, cooking everything from scratch. It’s every field trip to our sourcing partners, making sure the ingredients are the best and freshest we can find. It’s the quiet cleaning and reset after each service, long after we close our doors. 🧑🍳 From our team to every chef-owner and restaurant crew, happy International Workers’ Day. Here’s to daily discipline, care, and grit. 💪
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#noodlelover #restaurantlife #cheflife #happylaborday #campusfood
🍊Topping of the season: mandarin orange 橘子瓣瓣～ A fresh pop of flavor that lifts every bowl, bring not only just the colorful look, but bright, juicy, and naturally sweet taste. Sometimes all it takes is a little citrus. ✨
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#mandarinorange #noodlelover #topping #saladseason #junzikitchen
Spring in NYC means one thing: picnic with friends. 🌸 Blankets in the park, rooftop hangs at golden hour, friends gathered around good food. Bring junzi to the party! Order individual bowls, group order, catering or pantry for your next hang! 🍜🍱
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#picnic #picnicfood #picnicday #nycpark #junzikitchen
🌎 Earth Day started with a wake-up call. In the late 1960s, environmental disasters like oil spills and heavy pollution pushed the issue into public view. Inspired by student activism, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson helped launch the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, designed as a nationwide teach-in.🌏
☀️What followed was historic: over 20 million people gathered across the U.S., making it one of the largest public protests ever. Students, families, and communities came together to demand change. That momentum led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and major laws protecting clean air, water, and endangered species.
🧐More than 50 years later, Earth Day has grown into a global movement. But many of these issues are still unresolved, and in many ways, more urgent than ever. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, or unsure where to begin. But attention matters, and so do the choices we make every day.
🌱 At Junzi, running a restaurant means making those choices constantly, from packaging and food sourcing to everyday operations. Each decision is a small but real step toward doing better. Happy Earth Day. 🌍💚
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#earthday #earthday2026 #earthdayeveryday #earthhistory #junzikitchen
