Located right in little downtown Clemson, just past the chaos of fast food restaurants and traffic on Tiger Boulevard is a small restaurant that just opened during the end of the Spring 2021 semester. Returning to fill where Yolk once was is Lao Hu Cheng Asian Bistro (Asian Bistro for short). An Asian cuisine restaurant run entirely by one woman named Mae, Lydia Morris, a freshman political science major, claims it’s “the best food I’ve ever had.” Morris maintained this statement even upon further comparison to fine dining restaurants. 

This isn’t the first time that Mae has run a restaurant in Clemson; before Yolk even came into existence, Mae ran another restaurant that she fondly remembers students calling Mama’s or Mai’s Kitchen. Mae says that some of her regulars from that restaurant have returned, but she does worry about business. Mae said that she expected business to pick back up when students moved in, but she’s still seeing almost all the same faces. Mae is still hopeful that maybe just because her restaurant is new, people still need time. Mae has returned because she plans to write one last cookbook, so she wants to be cooking while she’s working on it. 

The menu for Asian Bistro may be smaller than your stereotypical Asian restaurant, but everything on it is gluten-free, there are vegetarian options or modifications, and Mae offers a variety of specials, such as sweet and sour chicken. The menu boasts food like bulgogi, bibimbap, pad thai and seaweed wraps, most of which come with your choice of protein (such as chicken, steak, salmon or tofu). The bulgogi is a Korean barbeque type of dish, served over a variety of vegetables and rice, finished with an amazing sauce and a dash of sesame seeds. Sweet and sour chicken is a dish served with rice, broccoli and chicken and covered in a sweet translucent sauce that’s a million times better than the sweet and sour sauce you might pick up at the grocery store. Being a one woman show, (with the exception of one other worker who comes in every once and a while to help out), Mae doesn’t have time to individually wait on each table like most restaurants in the area. Instead, she offers free Chinese and Japanese tea available in urns for you to dispense yourself. 

Quite possibly the most exciting part about Asian Bistro for any college student is the pricing. Mae knows her target customers. Nothing on the menu is more than $12, even the steak based dishes. But even though Mae doesn’t do table service, I still couldn’t help but to leave a larger tip than I would even at a traditional restaurant with normal table service. As Anna Delahunt, a senior environmental engineering major, put it, Mae provides “amazing food cooked by the nicest person I’ve ever met.”