When it comes to eating ethnic, Chinese food is America’s clear favorite. Today, there are more U.S. Chinese restaurants than all the fast-food chains combined, and since the 1800s, those restaurants have provided a pathway to immigrant success.
That potential holds as true today as it did in 1977, when Shirley and Tang Lee opened their first restaurant, Metairie’s Royal China.
Originally from Hong Kong, the Lees were just newlyweds when they settled in New Orleans. Their buffet was very popular with American customers, but the Chinese clientele came for dim sum, a style of eating largely unknown here in the 1970s.
“We had chicken wings on the buffet, which were also a dim sum item,” the Lees’ daughter, Carling, explained. Those wings were a gateway to a new style of Chinese cuisine. Soon everyone was asking for the dim sum menu, learning to enjoy Royal China’s fried and steamed dumplings along with more unusual items like sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves.
Carling Lee and her sister, Carla, grew up at Royal China.
“We were there every day after school,” Carling remembered. “We’d do our homework with the customers and when we were tired, we’d stretch out on dining room chairs to sleep. I remember needing two, then three, and eventually four chairs as I grew taller,” she chuckled.
After college, Carla married and moved away while Carling became an attorney.
“I never stopped working at the restaurant,” she said. As an assistant Jefferson Parish district attorney, Carling often helped out during weekday lunches. “Sometimes customers would ask, ‘Aren’t you the D.A. who just made me pay that fine?” she laughed.
The Lees sold Royal China and retired after 44 years, but Shirley missed her customers and Carling missed restaurant life too. Now a successful real estate attorney, Carling learned of an Uptown building for sale and urged her parents to reconsider retirement.
“Daddy and I are old,” Shirley protested.
“I will help,” Carling insisted, and in December 2022, Miss Shirley’s Chinese Restaurant opened to great acclaim. Carling runs the front with Shirley supervising the kitchen, serving the same beloved Cantonese dishes first popularized decades ago.
“It’s not easy,” Carling reflected, “but if it’s your passion, it’s your joy.” Her mother agrees. “I love people. They walk in happy and walk out so happy, I love it!” she exclaimed.
Vivi and Kevin Zhang of Wishing Town Bakery & Café were also new to the U.S. when they were introduced to New Orleans’ restaurant scene. Kevin’s aunt welcomed him and Vivi to New Orleans from their Guangzhou, China, birthplace in 2013. During college, Kevin Zhang had managed a bakery in China but acquired restaurant skills in his aunt’s Kenner restaurant. The budding entrepreneur eventually saved enough to acquire a food truck. Yumi, his hibachi on wheels, gained a loyal following among the Downtown hospital crowd, while Vivi polished her baking skills at home. In February 2018, the couple’s dreams were realized with the opening of Wishing Town Bakery & Café.
Not as sweet as conventional American pastry, from the start Vivi’s cakes were a sensation. The mille crepe cake includes more than a dozen crepes layered with flavored Chantilly cream. Flavors range from the familiar chocolate with hazelnut to the exotic matcha and durian. The brilliantly colored rainbow variation is a customer favorite along with the Wishing Cake, Vivi’s signature light-as-air chiffon cake with freshly whipped Chantilly cream and fresh fruit decoration. Kevin’s savory food, especially the soup dumplings provided another aspect to the café and proved an instant success.
From its original Kenner location, Wishing Town relocated to Severn Avenue across from Lakeside Shopping Center before expanding to a busy Uptown corner in 2022 with help from longtime friend, Aisha Chen. Today, Chen is a partner and restaurant manager there who relishes her customers’ devotion.
“One gentleman drives in from Grand Isle to eat with us,” Chen said. “He brings along an ice chest to fill up and take home!”
It doesn’t take a fortune cookie to know great American dreams still come true in Chinese family restaurants.
Poppy Tooker has spent her life devoted to the cultural essence that food brings to Louisiana, a topic she explores weekly on her NPR-affiliated radio show, Louisiana Eats! From farmers markets to the homes and restaurants where our culinary traditions are revered and renewed, Poppy lends the voice of an insider to interested readers everywhere.