Rawlings, bringing the heat in the kitchen; Wells, bringing the vibe.
The young man and woman peered at a phone and then into the windows of Mecha, the popular Crown Street noodle bar. It was about 10:40 a.m. The restaurant wouldn’t open until 11 a.m.
They tried the door anyway, and found it was unlocked. They were in luck. Or so they thought.
Daryl Wells moved swiftly from the back of the restaurant to the door: “I’m sorry,” he said. “We don’t open for another 20 minutes.”
After operating the restaurant for a year and a half, Wells has grown accustomed to early arrivals.On any given day right at 10:59 a.m. someone is pulling on the door looking for the slurpable comfort food the restaurant is known for delivering.
Come at happy hour, and you might have to take a seat on benches that have been added outside to accommodate the lines of people eager to get in. Watch and wait as people slurp down noodles from big bowls of steamy pho or ramen, while classic ‘90s hip-hop and R&B provide the soundtrack.
Mecha Noodle Bar is the brainchild of Tony Pham and Richard Reyes, two young restaurateurs who grew up together, the sons of Vietnamese and Latino immigrants. Mecha, which is Vietnamese for “mom and pop,” specializes in the richly, broth-based noodle dishes of Vietnamese pho and Japanese-style ramen. The restaurant also serves other street foods from those cuisine traditions like bao, egg rolls, and dumplings. You can even get bubble tea spiked with tequila and mezcal, bourbon, or cognac.
The communal design of the restaurant encourages the post lunch rush crowd to engage.
The men already had noodle bars operating in South Norwalk and Fairfield. When they decided to open up their third noodle bar in New Haven, they tapped two young locals to run the place: Wells, who grew up in Hamden, and Head Chef Jason Rawlings, who grew up in New Haven.
Wells, 28, will tell you he’s the vibes guy; he makes sure that your experience at the restaurant is a good time. The music choices playing in the restaurant are usually his. Rawlings, 32, of course, is the food guy, making sure that what is in your bowl is a good time as well.
Though Rawlings grew up in New Haven, which is where his father is from, his cooking roots are distinctively Southern like those of his mother, whose family hails from Georgia and Maryland. He grew up cooking with her and developed a great affection for that style of food.
So how did he end up cooking Southeast Asian comfort food?
Rawlings preps vegetables for the day’s bowls.
He credits his college roommates and their Korean moms. They would take over the kitchen cooking their native dishes and expose him to flavors that he came to love.
Wells said opening a Mecha location in New Haven just made sense. Not just because of the food culture but also the activist culture.
“For the owners and what their vision was for the spread of Mecha, they wanted to definitely be in a community-based city focused on community action,” he said. “The mission of Mecha is to take taste and tradition and transform it into pride and progress through interpretations of Southeast Asian comfort food in a high energy fun communal environment.”
Bartender Kim-Anh Nguyen shakes up some bubble tea.
To Wells, that means making Southeast Asian comfort foods like ramen and pho as likely to be what’s for lunch or dinner as pizza and burgers. It doesn’t hurt that the taste for both foods has grown as urban centers have become hot again. Wells pointed to the success of ramen spots like Momofuku and Ippudo in New York City.
“The ramen boom has been pretty big in the city for a couple of years now,” Wells said. “The hope is to take this family culture cuisine, which is that of one of our owners, Tony Pham. This is his family food, he’s of Vietnamese descent and a lot of the recipes for pho come from his family restaurant in Danbury.
“The hope is to break those barriers so that people will approach ramen and pho and recognize it as delicious and something they can enjoy whenever they want,” he said.
Rawlings credits staffers like Eric with helping drive what’s on the menu.
A bowl of Pho Ga, aka the “hangover cure.”
Rawlings said his job is to get people, particularly Americans, to think beyond what they know about food like ramen, which for many are the dry noodles and salty seasoning packet on which people with limited funds subsist.
“They brought me on because I love Asian cuisine and they’ve taught me a lot about their specific cuisine in Vietnam and then in the ramen,” he said. “They’ve let me bring the Korean background and culture that I’ve grown to love and the southern food that I love which I got from my mother. And all of that has kind of brought me to this point right now to kind of have a good amount of creative control to do things here.”
And that means Rawlings and his staff are allowed creative license to make dishes and try them out. That gives everyone ownership of what comes out of the kitchen, he said.
“I don’t personally take credit for all the dishes here,” he said. “I have a great support staff. We all collaborate on everything. And we do a lot of interactive food where people have to put their food together themselves. Where they kind of like take a ramen bowl, or a cold rice dish, that they have to mix everything together for themselves to kind of feel like they’ve been more interactive with what they’re doing.”
That creative control shows up in the food and the vibe of the restaurant, said the men, self-described 90s kids who grew up on “real hip-hop.” It’s nothing to walk in and here The Fugees, The Roots and A Tribe Called Quest jamming overhead. And, while Wells said the music isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, most people enjoy it.
“We don’t own the restaurant, but I feel like I’m an owner when I’m in this space,” Wells said.
Rawlings echoed the sentiment.
“We feel like our name is on the outside when people come in here as far as making sure the staff is set, making sure the plates are right, the dining room is set up correctly,” he said. “We definitely treat it like our name is on the building. This is our space.”
MECHA FACEBOOK
Rawlings, in his eight years of professional cooking, did a stint at Ordinary, while Wells formerly managed Barcelona Wine Bar in New Haven and throughout Connecticut. Though they both came up in the local food scene, they didn’t meet until Mecha.
“Everyone thinks that I’ve known him for years,” Rawlings said with a chuckle. “He just kind of turned into a tall little brother.”
“I’ll take that,” Wells said. “It’s probably the best thing you’ve ever called me.”
In all seriousness, Wells said when the owners were looking at putting together a team, “they wanted New Haven guys who know the community, who know the restaurant community and could build with anybody.”
Pham and Reyes created a parent company called Eat Justice that helps them put their money where their mouth — and your mouth — is.
That means from time to time, the restaurants will host backpack drives, fundraisers to feed families, and parties with a purpose to provide aide for things like hurricane relief. The New Haven location held a Valentine’s Day party to aid cancer research and care, donating the proceeds to the Yale-New Haven Smilow Cancer Hospital. More recently it raised money for Puerto Rico and St. Croix for Hurricane Maria relief.
“There are people who need help in the world and we try to impact that through campaigns we’re running,” Wells said. “It’s a cool thing because it just kind of highlights the fact that we’re not alone.”
He said as Mecha’s and by extension Eat Justice’s roots deepen in the community, the company is looking for opportunities to collaborate locally with other restaurants and food justice advocates. They’re working on a “dope community festival” that could bring together food and music in the late spring, early summer for a good cause.
“We’re not just here to make money and be a profitable business,” Wells added. “We’re doing some good in the community as well.”