How Tammy Wong of Rainbow Chinese Became a Wok Star

If you’re a longtime restaurant lover in the Twin Cities, you may think you know Rainbow owner Tammy Wong. After all, since 1987, she’s been harnessing fire and charming guests at her Eat Street Chinese anchor, which just reopened after a lengthy pandemic-driven closure. She’s also a staple of the Minneapolis Farmers Market on Lyndale with her famous egg rolls. But did you know that over the last decade, she’s been reinventing her food, inspired by her deep family history?

I thought I knew Tammy Wong, but I only came to understand the extent of her reinvention after chatting with her over the course of a month. Hearing all she’s been up to, I suggested: “I think you have been turning yourself into the Alice Waters of Chinese food in America, but no one knows it. Does that sound about right?”

“Alice Waters?” echoed Wong, turning from her roaring stove fitted with woks the size of washtubs and woks the size of dinner plates and woks of ordinary size, all clustered beneath a vent hood with an updraft as powerful as a summer storm. She tipped curried cauliflower onto a plate, shook her head, and replied, “I wish. Alice Waters has a team. I am all alone.”

True enough. Alice Waters, the pioneer of farm-to-table and California cuisine, does have a team, and when I popped in just before Rainbow reopened, Tammy Wong was literally alone. This was in part because Pancho and Pepe, cooks who have been at her side since the 1990s, were just walking out as I was walking in. The three had spent the morning around a steel table, rolling about a million egg rolls, just as they have on, let’s guesstimate, 10,000 other days? One measure of the worth of chefs is the loyalty they inspire in their cooks—Francisco “Pancho” Penafort and Jose “Pepe” Cantoran are loyal as the sky.