Northwest Chinese Food is staying in College Park after closing its original location

After more than 10 years as a fixture of College Park’s dining scene, Northwest Chinese Food shuttered its storefront along Baltimore Avenue on March 28.

The restaurant’s owners promised a new chapter by July for the acclaimed eatery that built a loyal following for its bold, regional flavors.

Diners will not have to travel far when Northwest Chinese Food reopens Aug. 15 at its sibling restaurant, Li Chun Café, at 7401 Baltimore Ave.

“The more we thought about it, this community is where Northwest Chinese Food belongs,” said Xue Ling, Northwest’s brand manager and daughter of owner Hua Wang.

“After 10 years, we couldn’t imagine continuing this story anywhere else,” Ling said in a Tuesday phone call with The Banner.

Li Chun will continue to operate as a café from 11 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. The eatery, which opened in March 2025, will continue serving lunch standouts such as a menu of bings, which are created at the café as stuffed Chinese wraps. The dine-in space will reopen from 5-9 p.m., with the full Northwest menu along with beer and cocktails.

The cafe’s tea bar, which includes matcha, coffee and other beverages, will remain open from 11 a.m.-9 p.m. but will be takeout only from 3:30 p.m. onward.

Northwest made its name on cuisine that borrows less from Wang’s native Shenyang in China’s northeastern Liaoning province than the Shaanxi province. Li Chun has continued to serve some Northwest menu items in recent weeks while the owners looked for a new home.

Shaanxi dishes blend Chinese cooking with influences from its Muslim population and can be seen in Northwest’s signature dishes, including rou jia mo, a crispy flatbread relative of the English muffin stuffed with strips of cumin lamb. The cuisine is growing in popularity in part due to the rise of Xi’an Famous Foods, the fast-casual chain that’s expanding in the capital region, including a Rockville storefront planned for this year.

A December post on Northwest’s Instagram account said the restaurant was being forced to close before the end of its lease “without proper notice, and without fairness.”

“We are fighting not just for a restaurant, but for everything this place represents: small business, immigrant dreams, local jobs, community history, and a decade of memories,” the post said.

Ling said her family didn’t want to dwell on the past and the issues that led to the closing of Northwest’s original location.

But the community response to their plea was overwhelming. Ling said her family was approached to look at other locations across the region, such as Washington, and cities with large Chinese immigrant populations and established restaurants, including Rockville and Fairfax, Virginia.

College Park officials have fought to balance new business and housing developments while residents have weathered an economic downturn. The gut punch of closures, including College Park’s outpost of Peter Chang, weighed heavily on the family’s mind.

“There’s downtime for Asian restaurants, especially when they’re not in Chinese [communities] like Rockville,” Ling said.

She attributed the restaurant’s anecdotal decrease in customers of Chinese heritage to a decline of Chinese-born students enrolling at the University of Maryland — 1,047 international students from China were enrolled as of March 2025, the lowest number since 2012, according to the Diamondback. That was part of the inspiration for opening Li Chun. The family wanted to broaden diners’ appetite for what Chinese food could be while making it more approachable as a fixture of their eating habits, Ling said.

Reopening Northwest is the family’s commitment to continuing that effort in the only culinary scene they’ve known.

“We had to move forward from our original home, and people keep asking us to stay, [saying] that they couldn’t afford to lose us,” Ling said. “That’s also the reason why we tried to find a solution to stay in the community.

“It’s both sides. We love College Park. The owner built her dream here. It wasn’t one day’s work; it’s 10 years.”