Cheng Biao Yang, the chef who built a following cooking Szechuan dishes in various restaurants around Seattle and the Eastside, is opening his own shop in Pike Place Market, trading in sit-down menus for a type of street snack that's been around for centuries. A cloistered corner near Emmett Watson's Oyster Bar is the future home of Country Dough, where Yang will make stuffed Szechuan flatbreads known as guo kui by hand.

Is there another place in Seattle that makes guo kui? If so, I'm not aware of it. Yang refers to them simply as pancakes, a term that belies the skill required to make them. His will be stuffed with meat or vegetables, or split and filled for more of a sandwich-type situation. 

Yang first caught people's attention at Seven Stars Pepper in Greenwood and the ID, then moved on to Szechuan Chef and Spicy Talk Bistro, and most recently hot pot–focused Uway Malatang, which inspired this Nancy Leson piece about Yang's mad skills with hand-pulled noodles. Clearly the man knows how to handle dough.

No longer affiliated with any other restaurants, Yang says this is his fresh start, the idea he has wanted to try for years but couldn't pull off in a restaurant kitchen where he was also preparing so many other dishes. The flatbreads are labor intensive and best when served fresh, says Yang. Hence he needed a setting with a high volume of customers...aka Pike Place Market. 

Market officials are big on letting visitors see how food gets made. In this small, window-walled atelier, most recently Sabra Mediterranean Food, customers can watch Yang form his pancakes using his hands and a small wooden dowel, lightly frying them on a griddle before sequestering them beneath in a tandoor-style oven until the interior is chewy, the exterior crisp. They're portable and tentatively priced around $7. To say I'm looking forward to this is an understatement.

Yang might also make a few noodle dishes, if he can pull it off alongside the guo kui. This might include zha jiang mian, made with a salty fermented black bean paste and ground pork. There's also talk of bottling his beloved hot sauce.

Country Dough will also have a menu of fruit teas, served hot and cold. Yang's wife, Shan Li, will work the register, and his son Steven is a partner in the business. There are just a handful of seats in the space, but it does open onto a courtyard with outdoor seating. The formal address is 1916 Pike Place.

Yang and family must still traverse the market's design approval process, but look for Country Dough some time this summer. Meanwhile, I happened upon this blog post on guo kui by local food blogger Marc Schermerhorn that definitely got me in the mood to eat stuffed, fried dough.