a joint · DCYum's II Carry-Out

A Chinese carryout on 14th Street NW in Washington, open past two most nights, selling fried wings, fried rice and french fries with mumbo sauce over them. It is the first address on most D.C. carryout lists.

Mumbo sauce is a D.C. carryout condiment: sweeter than barbecue sauce, sourer or hotter depending on whose it is, and poured over fried chicken wings, french fries, fried jumbo shrimp and fried rice. Where it began is disputed. The Mumbo trademark traces to Argia B. Collins Sr. in Chicago from at least 1950; Capital City, the D.C. bottler, dates the D.C. sauce to a restaurant called Wings-n-Things in the late 1960s. John Young was selling wings with mumbo sauce in Buffalo, New York in the early 1960s and credited a Washington restaurant for the sauce.

Yum's is where a reader lands in that argument. Complex's 2011 guide to D.C. carryout opened with it, at 1413 14th Street NW, describing a counter with no seats, a secret house recipe per shop, and the wing-and-mumbo order as the thing itself. Capital City's own history page lists Yum's among the D.C. Chinese carryouts that built their own versions, with Danny's, Jerry's, Eddie's, Andy's and Kenny's.

Tradition holds — the Chen family has run the counter since 1988, and a later upscale Chinese room, Da Hong Pao, opened next door. The Washington Post reported that in 2016; this project could not open the piece directly and marks the family's dates unverified.

Open every day in September 2026, per the shop's own ordering page: 11 a.m. to 2.30 a.m. Monday to Thursday, 11 a.m. to 3.30 a.m. Friday and Saturday, noon to 10 p.m. Sunday.