I know Cuban-Chinese. I've had Peruvian-Chinese. But I never ate at a soul-Chinese restaurant until I walked into Hip Hop Chow, a glass-fronted, brick-walled spot in the East Village.

It's the creation of Eric Kwan, who was born in Brooklyn and raised in Chinatown. That is why he has taste memories of both collard greens and bok choy, of fried chicken and sesame chicken. His mixed identity shows in the way he designed his place, with TV sets showing both break dancers and kung fu warriors, plus a changing art show on the walls to establish his East Village cool.

What the two sides of his menu have in common is that they both feature mildly seasoned comfort foods. If you order from the Chinese list, you are served an aluminum saucepan holding plenty of white or fried rice and a copious helping of an old-time Cantonese dish such as pepper steak, salt-and-pepper porkchops or egg foo yung with oyster sauce. Everything tastes a bit sweet and not much like what you'd get blocks away in Chinatown; but at lunchtime all that food costs $6, and you get a free soda with your meal.

From the Southern side of the menu, you can have a golden waffle with crisp panko-crusted buttermilk fried chicken ($10), a porkchop smothered in onion gravy ($12) or crunchy country-fried steak ($12). (Waffles can also be had with syrup or berries for brunch or dessert.) The portions are, if anything, bigger, and the flavoring just as mild and lightly salted. "Odd," said my friend from Birmingham, "because we Southerners usually oversalt everything."

Not that it bothered her as she piled cheese grits on a fork that already held collard greens smoky with bacon. And when she tasted the crumbly warm cornbread, she got up from the table to walk back and compliment the chef. "He may not look Southern," she told me, "but he got it just right."