Crying Tiger

Fish sauce, citrus, chile, garlic

Thai Dang keeps fish sauce, citrus, chiles, and garlic in close order as Chef at Crying Tiger in River North, Chicago. The gesture comes from Vietnamese cooking with little tolerance for blur: salinity first, lift next, heat held cleanly, garlic setting the base. At HaiSous Vietnamese Kitchen, where Dang is Executive Chef and owner, that discipline gives dishes their shape. At Crying Tiger, opened in 2025, he widens the frame to modern Southeast Asian cooking without leaving the grammar of balance behind.

Dang trained at L’Academie de Cuisine in Maryland, then worked as a cook in the downtown Mandarin Oriental hotel in Washington, D.C. Chicago put that training under tighter light. He cooked as chef at L20, later as chef de cuisine at Ria, and carried the larger problem of identity through Embeya in the West Loop until 2015. Since 2017, HaiSous has been his central workshop in Pilsen. Since 2022, Dang Good Wings and Cà Phê Đá have given the same palate other formats. From 2024, he has collaborated at Le Garçon Saigon and Chôm Chôm in Hong Kong. Crying Tiger brings him back into partnership with Lettuce Entertain You, the group tied to his early Chicago fine-dining years, with a room built for shared plates rather than quiet ceremony.

Curries, clay pots, and shareable heat

The menu works by pressure and release: sweet, sour, salty, spicy, then texture. Clay Pot Lobster Pad Thai uses a familiar noodle structure and pushes it through clay pot cooking for depth; Chinese Donut Prawn Toast Youtiao brings crisp dough, prawn, and herb nam jim to the table as something to tear and dip. Crispy H.K. Pork Belly sits in the same logic, skin and fat carrying the seasoning rather than decorating it.

Dang’s kitchen also leans into curry as a house discipline. Panang curry with braised duck replaces the expected protein with richer meat, while grilled Wagyu beef nam tok points back to the Thai dish that gives the restaurant its name. Chargrilled sugarcane beef bo la lot wraps beef in betel leaves, building sweetness and smoke into the bite. The dessert program adds another register through the Crying Tiger dessert with wild Thai banana and through Pastry Chef Juan Gutierrez’s toasted coconut sundae with palm sugar caramel. The restaurant states the cooking as Southeast Asian, not as a single-country exercise, and the method depends on keeping each component legible at the pass.

A room tuned to night-market energy

The former Hub 51 space at Hubbard and Dearborn gives Crying Tiger a large, kinetic room for this kind of cooking. The design reaches for tropical density: lush forest-inspired elements, warm light, energetic music, and a dining room that does not ask the food to soften itself for the setting. Plates move as groups build a meal across warm dishes, chilled dishes, noodles, curries, signatures, sides, and dessert.

That matters to the craft because Dang’s food has always treated intensity as structure. The room lets the cooking arrive in sequence, one plate shifting the register of the last. Prawn toast can precede curry; lobster pad Thai can sit beside pork belly; a whole table can end with wild Thai banana. If there is a next measure for Crying Tiger, it is how this broad Southeast Asian canvas settles under Dang’s hand, dish by dish, at the Hubbard and Dearborn pass.