Hawkers has elevated takes on street food
With its unique indoor/outdoor dining concept, Delray Beach location is the new model for Hawkers Asian Street Food boutique chain
If you need any indication on just how hot the South Florida cuisine market is, look no further than Hawkers Asian Street Food in Delray Beach.
The restaurant with elevated takes on street vendor fare quietly opened on the somewhat sleepy Intracoastal-adjacent end of Atlantic Avenue in July, but already the Orlando-based boutique chain is touting it as the showcase.
“It is the flagship of our concept,” declares CEO and co-founder Kaleb Harrell. “It is the epitome of indoor/outdoor dining, allowing us to create the perfect vibe. You know, where we are that’s not really...a hotspot. But I think it’s going to be very soon.”
In the former site of Sonoma Cafe and Bistro, the 9,000 square-foot space at 640 E. Atlantic Ave. has a street front bar with garage doors that open up to an outdoor seating area.
But it is the expansive courtyard that makes this Hawkers different from the other 10 locations stretched across Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and the even newer venues in foodie mecca East Nashville and power-broker town Bethesda, Maryland ( just outside of Washington, D.C.).
So far that courtyard is central to Hawkers’ success, according to Jim Gnehm, the general manager of Hawkers here in South Florida.
“Down here we are blessed because a lot of other [Hawkers] don’t have that unique interior patio area,” Gnehm says. “With Covid ... [that] has been very beneficial for us. Guests are blown away by it.”
Once they open all the sliders and garage doors, diners can see from the back of the restaurant all the way to Atlantic Avenue in the front of the eatery where there are popular sidewalk tables.
The food
The restaurant’s name was inspired by street food vendors who famously holler at passers-by to hawk their small plate dishes throughout China, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.
“The concept is based on our travels,” Harrell says, referring to his three other co-founders and friends. “In Asia some of the best food you can find is on the street in hawkers stalls. It’s like a hot dog cart on steroids. And it’s a lot better food. They get lines around the block.”
He also says these hawker stalls, stands and carts are often passed down from generation to generation, as are their recipes.
“My partners are from all over Asia,” Harrell says. “Every time we would come back to Florida, to Orlando... we would take some of this really great cuisine… and put them in a palatable form for Florida. The other, I would say about half of them, are family recipes, like one partner’s great grandmother’s curry pad Thai.”
Gnehm says that the pad Thai is the “No. 1 dish.” “We have amazing Korean twice fried wings — it has a beautiful heat, smokiness and a little bit of twang with crunch with peanuts and cilantro and toasted sesame seeds. And that sauce is amazing.”
The wings are $10, the pad Thai is $13. Gnehm adds that other popular menu items are Yo-Yi’s chicken dumplings for $8.50 and bulgogi beef street skewers for $10. He also says that the skewers — also available with bulgogi chicken or satay chicken — are “cooked on a traditional hibachi grill that goes on all evening long. We don’t have heat lamps in the restaurant. Everything comes straight our of the wok or off of the grill.”
The most popular cocktails, which also have an Asian spin to them, are the Margari-Thai, That’s My Bag, Baby and the O.G. Pain Killer.
The vibe
“What’s neat is that over in Asia you go to a couple of these stalls and then you go back to a communal table and share the food and talk about the food, on the streets, in the open air,” explains Harrell. “We take inspiration from that into our concept. There’s a variety of flavors in small plates. Your palate is continually excited. You could have eight different small plate-lets, taking a bite out of each one and each one is different, as opposed to sitting down to a 16 ounce steak.”
The servers are trained to be “tour guides... [and] walk you through what it’s like to eat street food in Asia.”
The shareable plate is central to Hawkers, as is the communal dining theme, but the layout is everything, according to Harrell.
“The bar is at the front of the restaurant and brings all the energy of a high-energy bar,” he says. “And then off to the side is the open kitchen so you can see and interact with the wok chef.”
There are high top tables surrounding the open kitchen which, along with the interior part of the bar, face the open courtyard.
During the day the music might mix a little reggae in with the “California beach style music,” says Gnehm. “It draws them in as they walk by. At dinner we transition to a more life of the party, a little more higher energy music. It’s not uncommon to see a bunch of people dancing around the fire pit.”
If you go
Hawkers is located at 640 E. Atlantic Ave., Delray Beach
For more information, call 561-485-4111 or go to EatHawkers.com.
The hours are 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sundays-Thursdays and 11 a.m. to midnight Fridays and Saturdays.