Local Eats

SAUCY PORKA

By Mabel Suen

The highly anticipated Chicago-based Asian and Latin fusion eatery Saucy Porka has arrived here at last, opening its third outpost – its first outside of Chicago – on Jan. 24.

The opening marked a homecoming of sorts for founder and chef Amy Le. The St. Louis native has partnered with her brother, Phil Le, to bring her unique quick-service menu to midtown St. Louis.

“I’m excited to be part of this growing food community here,” Amy Le says. “We’re the second-generation immigrant kids that grew up in restaurants and went on to do our own businesses. These are our own interpretations of what our parents did. My mom says, ‘You took what I did and accomplished so much more than what I could imagine.’”

The siblings grew up in the industry and honed their hospitality skills by helping out at their mother’s businesses, Hunan Royal in south St. Louis County and Ho’s Chinese Kitchen in St. Peters. For the past 19 years, Phil Le has worked for So Hospitality Group – which oversees Drunken Fish and Kimchi Guys – and most recently served as its director of operations. Amy Le went on to pursue a journalism career in Chicago, which eventually led to a social media and marketing position with then-startup Grubhub as its 14th employee. The job inspired her to reconnect with her culinary roots, and it wasn’t long before she was back in the kitchen and running her own catering business and, subsequently, a bánh mì food truck.

During this period, Amy Le connected with fellow food truck operator Rafael Lopez. Together, the chefs developed a series of collaborative dishes showcasing both of their cooking styles. Malaysianborn Amy Le, of Vietnamese descent, and Lopez, of Puerto Rican descent, found commonalities between the comforting home cooking of both of their cultures. By creatively combining elements of each, Saucy Porka was born.

“When we were coming up with the name, we wanted it to represent how bold our food was and how it has a lot of personality and bite,” Amy Le says. “‘Porka’ is Puerto Rican slang for a lot of attitude and sass. ‘Saucy’ is that attitude, but it also refers to all the sauces and marinades we cook with. And even though pork is the star of the show and is representative of a lot of Puerto Rican and Asian cooking, we offer a lot of vegetarian- and vegan-friendly items, too.”

In 2013, Amy Le and her husband, John Keebler, opened the original location of Saucy Porka in downtown Chicago, followed by a Hyde Park neighborhood location in 2018. Although Lopez has since departed the company to pursue a career in accounting, the former executive chef’s influence carries forth at Saucy Porka’s third location in St. Louis, which fills an approximately 2,200-square-foot space previously occupied by Kaldi’s Coffee Roasting Co.

Menu items include Le and Lopez’s flagship dish that landed them on Food Network’s “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives”: paella with jasmine rice simmered in coconut milk with Puerto Rican sazón seasoning, sautéed with Chinese sweet sausage, mild Spanish sausage and edamame, topped with slow-cooked guajillo (pepper) pork and scallions.

Additional highlights include chorizo egg rolls with ground pork, sweet potatoes, red cabbage, Chihuahua cheese and onions, served with jalapeño aioli; a ropa vieja (shredded beef brisket in tomato sauce) bánh mì with mayo and kimchi on a toasted baguette; and “bacos,” or bao-style tacos with filling options such as guajillo shrimp with corn salsa and chipotle aioli.

Saucy Porka, 3900 Laclede Ave., St. Louis, 314-818-2700, saucyporka.com