Frank Fat's, the venerable restaurant that was recently awarded the James Beard Award as an America's Classic, just hired Mike Lim from one of celebrity chef Martin Yan's (of Yan Can Cook fame) restaurant to run its kitchen, reports Tori Masucci Cummins in Sactown Magazine.

Sacramento native Mike Lim, 33, takes the helm of the venerable restaurant’s kitchen as executive chef, replacing chef Jimmy Ma. Lim’s experience includes two years at New York’s Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse, which New York magazine calls “the most urbanely elegant steakhouse you will ever see,” and four years at the celebrated AAA Five Diamond Award-winning Victoria & Albert’s restaurant at Orlando’s Walt Disney World Resort. Most recently, Lim was the sous chef at Martin Yan’s popular San Francisco restaurant, M.Y. China, where he says he was able to “build up my Chinese cuisine repertoire” and hone his craft for making authentic dishes like noodles and dumplings from scratch...

During his first week in the kitchen, Lim’s focus is mastering the restaurant’s classic dishes, like its celebrated 16-ounce New York steak, one of the chef’s personal favorite dishes. But he’s also looking forward, and one of his priorities will be embracing Sacramento’s farm-to-fork heritage and working with local farms to enhance the freshness of the Frank Fat’s menu.

Read the entire story in Sactown Magazine.

Coincidentally, I ate at Martin Yan's M.Y. China restaurant in San Francisco earlier this year with one of the food writers at the San Francisco Chronicle, a friend from college. She wrote about it here. If memory serves, the food was better than a PF Chang's, and many of their dishes were updated interpretations of Chinese classics.

I know that Frank Fat's has many fans who love it the way it is. I understand the nostalgia involved, but personally, I'd eat there more if they'd take more risks in modernizing their menu, and I'm hopeful that their new chef will help with that process.

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