The quaint, little traditional Chinese restaurant at the corner of Sunshine Street and Fremont Avenue is making big moves.
Corner 21 Chinese Cuisine has leased a spot for a second restaurant in south Springfield, located at 1730 E. Republic Rd. The new eatery, in the building that previously housed Sugarfire Smoke House, will open in late July or early August, Co-Owner Jiapeng Lu said.
The second restaurant will give Corner 21 more space for customers to sit down for a meal. It will also give the staff a larger kitchen. Lu, along with co-owner and head chef Yuming Han, already have plans to take advantage of the sizable kitchen, including new menu items that will only be available at the new restaurant.
The original 2,100-square-foot Corner 21 is so small that customers can't always find a table when they walk in, Lu said, which sometimes causes people to order takeout instead of waiting to dine at the restaurant. The new store, with about 4,100 square feet, will have enough room to accommodate many more guests during a rush.
“I (much) more prefer the customer to dine in because dine-in is always much, much, much better than to-go,” Lu said.
Corner 21 gains popularity in Springfield with traditional Chinese cuisine
Founded in its small building on Sunshine Street across from the Mercy Springfield hospital, Corner 21 has quickly climbed the charts to become a Springfield favorite. In early 2024, the company took second place in Best Chinese Restaurant in 417 Magazine's Best Restaurants in Springfield.
Lu said the restaurant's sudden popularity was a pleasant surprise. It was a gamble to open a Chinese restaurant that serves traditional plates in Springfield, where Chinese food comes with a lot of assumptions. He calls the Chinese food popular in the Springfield metro, like cashew chicken, “American Chinese.”
“Right now, we are probably the only one — authentic Chinese food in Springfield,” Lu said. “So, if you see our menu, we would never serve American Chinese food here.”
That gamble was even worked into the name of the business. The restaurant got its name from its physical location on a corner of a busy intersection, and “21” was to remind Lu and Han that the business was a gamble on the tastes of the Springfield community.
“Like blackjack, it was like gambling,” Lu said. “We (are) gambling that Springfield, local people, they like our food because over here American Chinese food is so famous.”
The new space will more than triple the footprint of Corner 21's original restaurant, Lu said. The business duo have already invested about $400,000 into the new space, and Lu expects to invest more before it opens.
“It's not done yet,” Lu said. “Money is still leaking.”
Furniture and kitchen equipment shipped straight from China
Han and Lu signed the lease for the new restaurant in April 2024, Lu said. The initial investment included taking over the past tenant's equipment, as well as furniture and kitchen equipment special ordered from China, which will take about two months for delivery.
Included in the equipment is a special grill that will allow the restaurant to make a dish Lu said he has been wanting to serve to Springfield for years. Hailing from the city of Beijing, the dish is called “Peking Duck” and is characterized by its thin, crispy skin.
Other restaurants do “like frying duck,” Lu said. “But it doesn't taste good because you have to have a specific grill from China. Because over here, there's nowhere you can get it.”
“The surface of the duck is really crispy and smooth. It's like a golden color.”
A colleague of Han's is also coming from China to help open and run the second Corner 21, Lu said. Traditional Chinese cooking skills take a lifetime to obtain and that specialty is hard to find in Springfield.
“They've cooked since they were maybe 16 years old and now they're around 40,” Lu said. “So, you can't just find a guy.”
It takes several chefs to run a traditional Chinese kitchen, Lu said. The new restaurant will have about 10 back-of-house employees to keep the kitchen going.
Eyes beyond Springfield
The building that will house the new restaurant is owned by Southgate Shopping Center, LLC, according to Greene County Assessor's Office records. The entire property had a total appraised value of $3.5 million. Southgate Shopping Center, LLC, is registered to Spenserv-Springfield, Inc., according to Missouri Secretary of State records.
Although a banner hangs announcing the arrival of Corner 21, the second location is undergoing construction and the interior renovations will still take some time, Lu said. The restaurant still needs to go through the process of obtaining proper licenses from the City of Springfield.
Lu and Han have their sights on locations beyond Springfield. Lu said he would like to expand to Rolla or Kansas City. The original Corner 21 on Sunshine Street already gets plenty of visitors from out of town.
“We get a lot of customers from Arkansas, St. Louis, Kansas City (and) Oklahoma,” Lu said.
