It’s actually Yuen and Wan’s third iteration of brunch. Their very first food concept, when they lived and worked in New York City, was a pop-up called Hong Kong French Toast, “where we would sell these stuffed French toasts with peanut butter, one was stuffed with [marshmallow] fluff and Nutella, we had one called the Elvis — that’s peanut butter, bacon and banana,” says Yuen. “We wanted to do something to highlight our Cantonese heritage…and we figured a dessert would be easy and it’ll look really nice and cute, and maybe it will become a viral concept.”
They quickly found that frying hundreds of slices of French toast for long lines of hungry diners was not easy. Soon after, they moved to Colorado, pivoted to savory food and launched Meta Asian Kitchen as a food hall stall at Avanti in 2019.
After moving out of Avanti to work on opening MAKfam, Yuen and Wan served out of LoDo bar Honor Farm for a period of time. That's when they launched the second iteration of their brunch menu. "Honor Farm had a drag brunch every Sunday, and so we were required to offer brunch,” Yuen says. They brought back their Hong Kong French toast and added several dishes including steak and eggs over garlic fried rice and a Spam and egg bao bun.
“We’ve always said when we open MAKfam, once we get settled into the space and have more time and more bandwidth, we’re going to bring brunch back,” Yuen notes.
Dorris Yuen and Kenneth Wan's first solo food venture was a Hong Kong-style French toast pop-up in NYC.
Jeff Fierberg
Unlike traditional French toast, Hong Kong-style French toast is essentially a sandwich with two slices of milk bread and a peanut butter or fruit jam filling that's dipped in beaten egg and deep fried. At MAKfam, the milk bread is made in-house and stuffed with a salted egg yolk custard. It’s served warm with condensed milk and a slab of butter that melts and soaks into the toast. The taste is heavenly — the perfect combination of sweet and salty with a slight eggy flavor. Yuen expects it to be the most popular item on the brunch menu.
Other dishes include the breakfast jian bing (think bacon, egg and cheese sandwich but on flaky, salty scallion pancakes instead of bread) and the steak and eggs over garlic fried rice. “That’s my favorite,” Yuen says. “The steak is marinated so well, and I love a runny egg yolk over carbs. And the garlic fried rice has lots of flavors and umami. When we used to sell it at Honor Farm, I used to make sure Ken didn’t sell all the steaks so there was one for me to eat after service.”
Both the vegan and bacon version of the jian bing sandwich are wrapped in a scallion pancake.
Jeff Fierberg
Important to note is that MAKfam will be serving only its brunch menu during brunch hours, so anyone hoping to get their paws on the award-winning mala wings should come after 2 p.m. on weekends.
The team has also revamped the drink menu with cha chaan teng-inspired beverages like the Yuenyeung Cocktail, an alcoholic milk tea made with Die Die Must Try's black tea; and the Tiger Mom, a Bloody Mary made with fish sauce and, for an additional charge that's totally worth it, a Sichuan Five Spice tequila. Yuen loves the name of that cocktail. “My daughter, she’s born in the year of the tiger, and the Chinese name for MAKfam means little tiger place,” she explains. “The drink is a little spicy, it’s a little savory, it’s extra — just like your typical tiger mom: My kid’s better than yours. My Bloody Mary is better than yours.”
When asked if she’s directing that statement to MAKfam's next door neighbor, Snooze, or the Hornet across the street, she laughs. "No, no, we’re doing our own thing. It’s different — it’s a different menu, and I just really want everyone to give our brunch a try, even if it’s a little different," she concludes.
