New elevated Chinese-inspired cuisine opening with world-famous chefs- Wu Zhao

Bentonville welcomes a new Chinese restaurant—Wu Zhao—featuring elevated dim sum, sushi, fried rice, and more. Chefs Vincent Lim—AKA the Wolf of Wok Street—and Catherine Zhang have traveled the world opening restaurants and dessert shops, starring in cooking shows, and building devoted social media followings. Now, their journey brings them to Bentonville to open Wu Zhao.

Named after the first and only Chinese Empress, Wu Zhao promises a dining experience of unparalleled strength, sophistication, and exquisite flavor. Join us as we explore the arrival of Wu Zhao and taste true culinary royalty right here in Northwest Arkansas.

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Transcript

Introducing Wu Zhao Restaurant

Biju Thomas 0:00

Dining Out Bentonville. Beyond the menu behind the flavor hey everybody, welcome to Dining Out Bentonville with me, Bijou, brought to you by the lovely folks at Visit Bentonville, and today I cannot be more excited than to present to you one of the most anticipated openings in all of Bentonville. With these two lovely folks, we are standing in Wuzhou, just on the west side of downtown, off the square. Now tell me about you. Who am I talking to? Who are you, sir Vincent? Vincent Lim, Vincent Lim, it's lovely to meet you, Thank you.

Catherine Zhang 0:36

Catherine Zhang.

Biju Thomas 0:37

Catherine Zhang, it's lovely to meet you. I have so many questions, but I got to start with. What is the name? Wuzhou, wuzhou, okay, but I got to start with.

Vincent Lim 0:43

What is the name? Wu Zhao, wu Zhao Okay, so Wu Zhao is the first female emperor of China and she's the only one ever, right, what? So? That's why we had to name. You know, the restaurant has to be powerful, you know, has to represent something strong, and that's what. That's what we're doing.

Biju Thomas 0:59

And uh, speaking of female emperors, we have Catherine. So, catherine, tell us about you.

Catherine Zhang 1:07

Well, I'm a pastry chef, business owner, content creator. So basically, six, seven years ago I was on a Netflix show. Might have watched it. It's called Zuma's Just Desserts, season 2. I won that and I guess after that it all started snowballing, went on social media, started doing content. Nice, now we own a couple of businesses dessert shops and, yeah, now I'm here in Bentonville doing some desserts for them.

Biju Thomas 1:30

So it's quite exciting, it's gorgeous, all right, so that's how she got here. How did you get here Me?

Vincent Lim 1:36

I'm known as the Wolf of Walk Street on social media.

Biju Thomas 1:39

Okay, first of all, I did look that up, that is a brilliant name, the Wolf of Walk Street.

Vincent Lim 1:45

Okay please continue. Yeah, so we do social media, I do social media and we have I've got a factory that does my own seasoning up there. We've got a little bit of yum yum, nice, and then we've got a couple of dessert shops in Sydney.

Barry Furaseth 1:59

Yeah, that's exactly what it is.

Vincent Lim 2:01

Yeah and yeah, that's. That's about everything we do. We fly around the world and do events.

Meet Chef Vincent and Catherine

Biju Thomas 2:06

That is brilliant. Along the way, you've garnered millions and millions of views on the things you're doing, so, which means you're bringing a little bit of firepower to Bentonville, arkansas, a little bit that we have yet to see anything of this caliber. So this is very exciting for all of us who love food, but also to see what the rest of the world is going nuts about and what you two do, so very excited to hear about it and actually taste it. Well, that's no pressure at all. Oh no, it's not going to be like that, sir, please.

Vincent Lim 2:33

Okay, yeah, yeah. Well, let's do it. Okay, so we're here to feed you. Today. We're going to do a fried rice. Okay, We've got some steamed rice here. We do fresh rice every single day. Okay, there's a lot of arguments online about this. Fresh rice, frozen rice, sorry day, old rice. We always use fresh rice. Fresh rice is better. We've got a little bit of char siu, so Chinese barbecue pork. We roasted this with a local pork that we have here. Then we have this this is lap cheong Chinese sausage green onions and shrimp down the bottom.

Biju Thomas 3:09

Ah, there it is. Shrimp was hiding at the bottom, I see it Okay.

Vincent Lim 3:11

Yeah, so you know, since we get the best shrimp that we possibly can here in Benville from the other restaurant of Blue, we have the best quality seafood here at Wu Zhao. Okay, then we've got a little bit of gai lan. This is Chinese broccoli, and this is something that we invented for one of the restaurants. Secret ingredient. This is actually breadstick that we'll be throwing into the fried rice as well.

Biju Thomas 3:34

I've never seen that before, but I can only imagine the textures, Exactly Because you know Americans love crunch.

Vincent Lim 3:41

That's right, we love crunchy food.

Biju Thomas 3:47

Oh look, all right, can you see, can everybody see back here? I'm going to get out of the way. I'm going to get out of the way here. Also, while you're doing that, what is happening here? That?

Vincent Lim 3:54

is ridiculous. Oh okay, so this is our red braised pork belly Whoa that we're cooking for at least 12 hours. That is incredible.

Biju Thomas 4:04

Look at that.

Vincent Lim 4:04

Yeah, this is literally fall off the bone, melt off your tongue that we can just literally break up with your fingers, and we're going to put this into a dumpling and it's going to be the best dumpling you're ever going to have Super juicy. Super juicy, All that fat all that spiciness. That is gorgeous.

Biju Thomas 4:19

I've never seen that.

Vincent Lim 4:19

There's actually no spiciness. This layer of oil will be used as dressing on top.

Biju Thomas 4:24

Nice, yeah. What is the color coming from, this color we?

Vincent Lim 4:28

call it capsicum. You guys call it peppers, right yeah, red chilies, peppers, all those words.

Biju Thomas 4:38

It's fantastic. Okay, All right back to this.

Vincent Lim 4:41

I'm going to stay out of the way. I won't burn you, come on.

Biju Thomas 4:45

I want to stay out of the way so that people can see.

Vincent Lim 4:48

So they're not looking at my back. Sounds good.

Biju Thomas 4:50

Yeah, I'm gonna get out of the way here so you can cook.

Vincent Lim 4:52

Okay, so we're gonna go wok on maximum heat. Little bit of oil. Right now, all I'm doing is I'm using a lot of oil to coat the wok, to make this into a non-stick. We're not actually putting that much oil into the fried rice. Tip that away. Little bit of fresh oil.

Cooking Fried Rice Demonstration

Biju Thomas 5:16

We've got two eggs into the wok man the amount of heat that a wok these things get extremely hot.

Vincent Lim 5:31

they get over a thousand degrees. Look at that fire. We're gonna throw in rice. So with Chinese cooking it's very fast, everything's cooked fresh, but you have to move very, very quickly. If you move slowly, everything's gonna burn. Okay, yeah, yeah, we've got our meat vegetables prawn very, very quickly. If you move slowly, everything's going to burn. Yeah, yeah, we've got our meat, vegetables prawns everything in.

Biju Thomas 6:01

Man, that is cool. Catherine, you're doing great. I'm going to move this out of your way, so I get it on your chef coat.

Catherine Zhang 6:07

Thank you, I'm doing so much work.

Biju Thomas 6:08

You're doing great, thank you.

Vincent Lim 6:09

Catherine's giving me moral support. We need. Catherine here.

Catherine Zhang 6:15

Without Catherine, this is not possible. That's right that's right.

Biju Thomas 6:16

You need moral support.

Vincent Lim 6:18

No, I'm just kidding. I'm saving Catherine for the final dessert later. Oh, this is gonna be the main event, but we've got Catherine's dessert, which is world famous, all right, so you guys gotta try that. Okay. Okay, guy on, this is Chinese broccoli. Yeah, chinese broccoli. I'm sure you guys have probably not seen it around here before. Now, my secret magic sauce that we made earlier today hey chef, it looks like you still like cooking.

Biju Thomas 6:53

What's that? It looks like you still like cooking. What's that? It looks like you still enjoy cooking.

Vincent Lim 6:56

Oh, I do, I do, I really do. I mean, I've been cooking for like 20 years now but like I still enjoy every bit of it. You know, I fly around the world and I get to cook with all these. Like when you're a chef, you only really get to work with the people in your kitchen, right yeah?

Biju Thomas 7:10

yeah.

Vincent Lim 7:10

But being on social media, I'm able to work with chefs from all around the world, from different calibers. Yeah, getting to see all that man just gets me excited. You know what I mean.

Biju Thomas 7:19

Yeah, did you start cooking at home. What was that? Did you start cooking at home?

Vincent Lim 7:25

No, I started cooking at my dad's restaurant. Ah, yeah, I started cooking at my dad's restaurant. He taught me a lot of the basic wok techniques. And then, yeah, I went to go work in many different restaurants after that and I realized I really love Chinese food, yeah, so I decided to open my own restaurant at 22. Nice yeah.

Biju Thomas 7:46

And did your dad still have his place? What's that? Is your dad's place still?

Vincent Lim 7:50

going no, my dad actually passed away in 2017. So a lot of this stuff is just I'm doing this because, you know, I want to remember my dad's recipes. I want to share it with the world. Yeah, that's the reason why I'm doing it?

Biju Thomas 8:03

Did your dad get to?

Vincent Lim 8:03

see you open your place, unfortunately not. Oh man.

Biju Thomas 8:06

Yeah, but it's okay, you know.

Vincent Lim 8:09

I'm sure he sees it one way or another. Absolutely Okay, brilliant, that's the fried rice done Very, very quick.

Biju Thomas 8:16

Did you already put the? The bread is coming later. Oh yeah, the bread's coming later. Okay, so it's significantly simpler than one would think. The way that you did it, the heat seems to be the major ingredient.

Vincent Lim 8:27

It is. But you know, with everything you know like, the longer you do it, the easier it looks. Yeah, there's that. So now we add the bread.

Biju Thomas 8:36

Okay, there it is.

Vincent Lim 8:45

Ta-da, ah, okay, so that's the fried rice. All right, now we're going to top off the fried rice with more crunchy stuff. We love it.

Catherine Zhang 8:55

Did you need garnish?

Vincent Lim 8:57

All the crunchies. Okay, so this is actually a typhoon shelter crunchy. Typhoon topping right there, typhoon topping. So we're just going to add a little bit all around. So you've got the nice rice that's soft, warm, and we've got the crunchy textures.

Biju Thomas 9:11

Man look at that. Is that a crunchy rice Plus bread? Yeah, beautiful, oh no no that's a crunchy.

Vincent Lim 9:17

So it's a bread crumb tossed with garlic and scallions Scallions and everything good and fragrance.

Biju Thomas 9:23

Love it, okay. Okay, more toppings, more textures, little bit of green on top.

Vincent Lim 9:28

That's it, man. Beautiful buddy, that's the fried rice for you. Look at that.

Biju Thomas 9:33

Huh, all the smells, all the toasty smells you get out of this. It's pretty incredible.

Catherine Zhang 9:38

All the different toasty smells. I love his fried rice.

Biju Thomas 9:42

Toasty bread. Oh man, All right, I'm going to set it here for you. Okay, we prepared for you two dishes.

Vincent Lim 9:49

Oh yeah, while you weren't looking, I finished this one off man that. So this is our, this is one of our signatures that's actually coming out in my book. We have pork and prawn wontons okay, tossed in a light red chili oil that's not spicy or fragrant. Then we've got our typhoon shelter crumb again. Then we've got black and white sesame seeds. For the fragrance, a little bit of sesame oil. And what do you guys call it? What do you guys call coriander? Out here, cilantro, cilantro, cilantro and green onions beautiful and the red, the sauce.

Biju Thomas 10:23

I saw you pull it out. Is it from that, from the?

Chef's Story and Food Philosophy

Vincent Lim 10:25

pork belly, a little bit of red pepper sauce. It's not spicy at all, but um, it adds a lot of fragrance.

Biju Thomas 10:31

it looks angry and looks like it would be spicy Let me get some coloring.

Catherine Zhang 10:34

It's not angry.

Biju Thomas 10:35

I promise it's not angry. That is lovely, chef. These look and smell incredible. I was just saying you can smell all the toastiness in here, and for anybody watching who's waiting for our grilled cheese, this is this chef's interpretation of a grilled cheese. We've got crunchy deliciousness in here. We've got toasted bread. See, we never said it had to be an actual grilled cheese. It just needs to be your version of a grilled cheese, and that's what we're going to have. I wish you could smell this. It's like all the toasty goodness of shallots and garlic and this toasty bread and getting some incredible sauces and spices coming through Wonderful. And then we've got this beautiful red pork, and I'm gonna call it red pork. That's probably not the name. Spicy wontons, spicy wontons, but what do you call the pork itself, though?

Vincent Lim 11:21

Red braised pork. Red braised pork belly.

Biju Thomas 11:23

Red braised pork, belly and shrimp stuffed spicy wontons Beautiful. I feel like we need to go eat this.

Barry Furaseth 11:29

Yeah, 100% Shall, we head out.

Biju Thomas 11:31

Let's go outside Then I can hear the rest of the story, I'll bring it out. Okay, you've done so much already. Thank you, okay, look at all this gorgeous food that just appeared and speaking of just appeared while we're sitting here in this super secret looking restaurant, the windows are all boarded up. We're sitting under this beautiful tree Tree full of cherry blossoms in the super secret, hidden away restaurant, which will not look like this in a few days. We're joined by the founder and one of the anchor restauranteurs here in Bentonville, barry of Blue. Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

Catherine Zhang 12:11

I'm going to start digging into that. Before it melts, absolutely, put some sauce on it, wow.

Biju Thomas 12:15

Catherine's putting secret sauce on it. Catherine, what is that she's been?

Vincent Lim 12:18

waiting the whole time just to do that.

Biju Thomas 12:19

That's really all you wanted to do.

Catherine Zhang 12:21

She did that beautifully too.

Barry Furaseth 12:22

By the way, that was amazing Strawberry sauce Underneath.

Catherine Zhang 12:24

We've got matcha. We've got lychee condensed milk.

Biju Thomas 12:28

Yeah just try it. So it's an ice yeah.

Catherine Zhang 12:31

It's a shaved ice, bingsu Korean style shaved ice.

Barry Furaseth 12:42

We were out in Portland a couple months ago and I had this for the first time and it was absolutely amazing. So I can't even imagine. Wait a minute.

Biju Thomas 12:54

Is this one serving One order? Is it that size One? Order yeah, this is absolutely amazing. No one's going to share this. One serving one order. Is it that size? One order. Yeah, One order. This is absolutely amazing. It's great for sharing. You know, no one's going to share this. That's one serving. This is amazing.

Dessert and Restaurant Origins

Vincent Lim 13:04

Mmm, yeah, so it comes in the middle. So the more you dig, the more gold you're going to find, whoa.

Catherine Zhang 13:10

It's like digging for treasure.

Vincent Lim 13:12

And the ice is. It's not like a granita, it's super, super fluffy. We've got this machine that shaves it very, very fine, so you've got to eat it quick, or else it melts.

Biju Thomas 13:23

And the deliciousness, the cream on top, fantastic.

Vincent Lim 13:27

Yeah, so Catherine's actually famous for that. She's got a dessert shop in LA. We've got places in Sydney that we just solely focus on these creams and these sauces. That's amazing.

Biju Thomas 13:36

Yeah, that's what brings it all together.

Vincent Lim 13:38

Okay, I've never seen anybody try desserts first. That was unbelievable All that effort cooking this beautiful food and you guys tried the desserts. Come on, we're gonna try the fried rice, purely for practical reasons because it was melting.

Biju Thomas 13:50

It was darn good. Okay, barry, while I'm eating this, we gotta know. So you've been here. How long have you had Blue here in town?

Barry Furaseth 13:56

We just had our 10th year anniversary on May 5th. 10 years with.

Biju Thomas 13:59

Blue, Yep. And then you decided to bring like two of the most talented, most talked about people in the world to Bentonville to open up a place right down the street Yep, how did you all even connect? How did you even meet?

Barry Furaseth 14:11

That's an interesting story. I'll make it quick because it'll be too long. But we're laying in bed one night and and when, when me and ali really wanted to. One of my favorite foods in the whole world is chinese and for the last four years, five years in bentonville we sat there. We're like you know when is when is somebody going to open up a chinese restaurant in in bentonville, like a real, you know high-end chinese? And so we started the whole concept of of wuzhou.

Barry Furaseth 14:40

We're laying in bed one night and I said to Ali, my wife over here, and I said she, I said you know, we need, we need, we need a really a great Chinese chef. And so two nights later we're laying in bed and she says she goes. You got to take a look at this guy on on social media, really. And so I looked at it and I'm like that's the guy. I said, so I looked at it and I'm like that's the guy. I said I go, you know, and of course it was Vincent Lim, you know the Wolf of Walk Street. And I said, well, there's no way we can get him to come out to Bentonville. And so she DM'd him and four months later, really, four months later, four months later? No, no, no, never mind.

Vincent Lim 15:17

I replied four months later, four months later.

Barry Furaseth 15:19

See that works. And so again, we're sitting laying in bed and she goes. Vincent Lim replied to us and I said, well, just give him my phone number. And so she went back and he, actually I got, he gave her the phone number. I called him. It took me about two, three weeks to convince him to come out to Bentonville, arkansas, and got him to come out here and he fell in love with the town first and I told him the whole concept and he just said listen, I want to be a part of it.

Vincent Lim 15:54

And that's where it all started, so it was strictly. You know how he actually got me was. He flew me out here and he gave me a couple of electric bikes and he made me ride around town, got all these sightseeing spots. I went to crystal bridges, then I went to the walmart, but at the time it was building it was a year ago. Yeah, the first walmart went out there. Then we rode the bikes around to the dirt bike tracks and I realized that's how he got me the weather here was perfect.

Vincent Lim 16:16

You know. You ride down any street. Everybody's like hey, how are you doing, where do you come from? Because I've got that Australian accent yeah.

Catherine Zhang 16:22

So yeah, that's how he really got me.

Vincent Lim 16:24

Yeah, got me with the city.

Barry Furaseth 16:25

Yeah, I'm the only one eating Sorry.

Vincent Lim 16:29

No enjoy it. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.

Biju Thomas 16:39

I you know. I hope you've got it. You came with a big appetite. I brought the appetite.

Vincent Lim 16:41

Good, so they got you with the bikes?

Biju Thomas 16:41

Yes, how long did that take?

Vincent Lim 16:42

Four months Is that what you said? No, no, it took me four months to reply because you know I'm flying around the world Like social media blew up, I think you were in. Dubai at the time. No, I was on a cruise ship. I was on a cruise ship with absolutely no reception. That's why I replied to the guy. He was bored Four months, four months, but yeah, hey, it all worked out. It all worked out In the end, it all worked out.

Biju Thomas 17:04

And, catherine, how did you get convinced to come out here?

Catherine Zhang 17:07

To be honest, I don't even know how I got convinced. He calls me. He's riding his bike around Bentonville, he's FaceTiming me oh my gosh, look where I am. You know he was still figuring out whether he wanted to come here and open this with Barry and stuff and it was like, yeah, it's a great, amazing place and I should just come by next time and just check it out, see how it is. And you know, barry flew us over and yeah, I'm here again.

Biju Thomas 17:29

And I mean you look at this place I've walked by here a million times between the next door neighbor restaurant opening and other things. It didn't really look like a whole lot was happening inside here, but this is incredible what you've all done Like it's just such a gorgeous place. So my best friend's last name is Lim, so everybody named Lim is technically a cousin to me. So, cousin Lim, welcome to Bentonville, catherine, welcome to Bentonville. So you're known as the Wolf of Walk Street yeah, which is brilliant, by the way, the Wolf of Walk Street, which is brilliant, by the way. What is your most exciting thing that you've done, most talked about thing you've done that's turned into a social media thing for you Most?

Vincent Lim 18:06

talked about thing that I've done.

Biju Thomas 18:08

What do you think?

Vincent Lim 18:09

Yeah, it's been a lot.

Barry Furaseth 18:13

If you ever see him on TED, he did a brilliant job talking about the Chinese culture, talking about Chinese chinese culture, talking about chinese food. Um, and I think, I think that was for me that was watching you on ted was pretty amazing. Thanks, man.

Vincent Lim 18:26

So yeah, so I've done. I've done a number of things. I think it's hard to pick because everything has been so crazy in the last four years, but a couple of highlights is definitely the ted talk. I did a ted talk that, um, kind of blew up and, just, you know, just changed my whole life right.

Social Media Success Stories

Vincent Lim 18:44

Then I hopped on masterchef as a guest judge nice, uh, the australian one, which is like the, the main one and then what else did we do? We did a whole bunch of things like. There's so many things, you know. Then we then we opened the world's most viral crepe shop. Okay, uh, we opened this, uh, this is in sydney, and we did pop-ups in different cities as well. And we also opened your yum yum factory. So we're making seasonings and we're selling it globally. So we've just done so many things in the last few years and I think everything has been very exciting. But I think being able to travel and do what we want and cook and travel and hang out with friends, I think that's the best part to my job, that's fantastic Catherine.

Biju Thomas 19:24

what about for you? What do you think has been the most exciting of this whole journey that you two are on?

Catherine Zhang 19:29

I think honestly it was the starting point, Like for me. Being on the TV show at the time, it was when I wasn't sure what I really wanted to do. I was kind of still studying, I wasn't like hadn't really set my path in life, I guess, and being on that I was like, oh okay, this is what I really love, what I want to pursue, and I guess it just kind of ended up rolling from there and I guess I attribute me here like being here was because of that. So for me that was the most memorable.

Biju Thomas 19:55

Well, barry, I know we're short on time for this, but I appreciate you so much taking time, appreciate you coming and you, you know the town appreciates everything you do and, of course, bring in the star power. You bring in the firepower, the incredible talent and energy you bring into town Something that we really really are ready for. Finally, and I think we really needed, thank you all, man, this is incredible. I cannot wait for you to open. I cannot wait for the folks in town to be able to come in and check this out.

Biju Thomas 20:23

I appreciate it. Do you have a date in mind yet? First week in June. Sometime this June.

Barry Furaseth 20:28

Second week in June.

Vincent Lim 20:30

All right, after trying the fried rice, let me know when we should open.

Biju Thomas 20:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not going to cop this Do we qualify to open in Bentonville.

Barry Furaseth 20:38

I love his fried rice Unbelievable.

Biju Thomas 20:41

Well, sometime in June, this place will be open. This place will be popping this fried rice. You can come in and have this with the toasted bread and the toasted crunchies and the deliciousness and the Chinese sausage. It's incredible, it's everything. Thank you, thank you, thank you it was wonderful.

Barry Furaseth 20:59

Thank you, thank you, thank you. It was wonderful. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you so much, thank you, thank you, appreciate it.

Catherine Zhang 21:02

Catherine, thank you, thank you.