The conundrum dealing with the Fong household of Woodland arose earlier this 12 months, shortly after a UC Davis regulation professor grew fascinated about an indication posted above the counter that learn: “The Chicago Cafe since 1903.”
The Fongs had by no means provided that signal a lot thought, past taking satisfaction in operating a household enterprise with a cherished historical past locally.
Not Paul Fong, 76, who has labored on the restaurant together with his spouse, Nancy, 67, since emigrating from Hong Kong in 1973.
Amy Fong has spent loads of time on the Chicago Cafe in Woodland, Calif. Rising up, she headed to her mother and father’ restaurant each day after college to do homework and assist with chores.
(Carl Costas / For The Instances)
And never his kids, Amy Fong, 47, a bodily therapist, and Andy Fong, 45, a software program high quality engineer at Apple. They grew up sweeping flooring and doing homework within the restaurant after college, however had gone off to school (UC Berkeley for Amy; San Jose State for Andy) below strict orders from their mother and father to seek out good careers, removed from the grind of restaurant work. Now, with kids of their very own, they have been trying ahead to their mother and father’ retirement; they wished their mother and father to have the ability to loosen up and spend time with their grandchildren.
Then, at some point in 2022, Gabriel “Jack” Chin, a regulation professor at UC Davis, stopped in for lunch. Chin is an skilled in immigration regulation, particularly the Chinese language Exclusion Act of 1882 that made it extremely troublesome for Chinese language folks to immigrate to the U.S. And he knew one thing the Fongs didn’t, one thing that will complicate the household’s efforts to wind the enterprise down: If the signal behind the counter was correct, if the Chicago Cafe really had been working since 1903, that will make it a treasure of historic significance.
In January, UC Davis introduced the outcomes of Chin’s analysis: Of the tens of hundreds of Chinese language eating places serving meals in America, the Fongs’ unsung little diner is the oldest one constantly working in California, and possibly within the U.S. The Fongs all of a sudden discovered themselves in possession of an necessary piece of American historical past, which had been sitting in plain sight in a farm city 20 miles northwest of Sacramento.
The media rushed to cowl the story, and hordes of recent clients adopted. The Woodland Metropolis Council issued a proclamation, which included testimonials from council members about their favourite dishes. And as an alternative of retiring, Paul and Nancy have been working twice as laborious.
On a latest Friday, their daughter, Amy, got here by the restaurant along with her two kids and took within the scene, in its ordinary state of pleasant chaos. Prospects occupied virtually each desk and banquette, many chowing down the restaurant’s signature chop suey — which, like a whole lot of meals served on the Chicago Cafe, is a Chinese language American dish unfamiliar in China itself.
Amy Fong’s daughter, Kira Kranz, entertains herself throughout a go to to her grandparents’ restaurant.
(Carl Costas / For The Instances)
The lone waitress, Dianna Oldstad, has labored with the Fongs for many years. She bustled back and forth, greeting regulars with gruff heat. Within the kitchen, Paul and Nancy raced from reducing board to grill with plates of meat and greens, and handed the completed dishes off with dizzying velocity. Watching over all of it have been mounted deer and elk and an enormous stuffed peacock with its tail unfurled in blue-green glory — items from clients through the years.
Paul’s satisfaction in serving his diners, a lot of whom have turn into mates and fishing buddies, was evident. Nonetheless, his daughter famous with dismay: “They’re getting too previous to do that each day.”
The household’s dilemma was so obvious that longtime clients chatted about it as they waited for his or her meals: Would the Chicago Cafe merely finish when Paul and Nancy retired? And the way might its historic import have emerged simply because the Fongs have been lastly able to step again?
It’s extra sophisticated than one would possibly guess to unearth the historical past of a Chinese language restaurant that has been a fixture in a city for greater than 100 years.
Partly, that’s due to the racism of the early twentieth century: Native directories excluded Asian folks and companies till the Thirties, in line with Chin. So data of the enterprise needed to be discovered elsewhere.
The Chinese language Exclusion Act added one other wrinkle. The regulation sought to ban immigration, however didn’t fully cease it. As a substitute, many Chinese language folks bought the identification of Chinese language Individuals born within the U.S., after which posed as their kinfolk. The immigrants who got here utilizing pretend identities have been referred to as “paper sons.”
For a time, eating places had their very own exception to the Chinese language Exclusion Act — which some coined “the lo mein loophole” — that allowed enterprise homeowners to go to China on service provider visas to convey again workers. Within the years after 1915, when a federal courtroom added eating places to the listing of companies allowed such visas, the variety of Chinese language eating places in America exploded.
Dianna Olstad, the only waitress on the Chicago Cafe, has labored with the Fongs for many years.
(Carl Costas / For The Instances)
Paul Fong’s grandfather virtually definitely got here earlier than the “lo mein loophole” went into impact. He got here as a paper son, steaming into San Francisco Bay below the identify Harry Younger. The precise 12 months is misplaced to historical past: The 1906 earthquake in San Francisco set off a fireplace that burned up reams of naturalization data — and in addition allowed many individuals so as to add additional “kinfolk” to the rolls when the data have been reconstructed.
“Harry Younger” made his solution to Woodland, which had developed a busy Chinatown populated by immigrants who had come to work on the transcontinental railroad. On the time, a lot of Woodland’s neighborhoods have been graced by stately Victorians, laid out on massive tons shaded by towering oaks. Its Chinatown was lots much less grand: a group of wooden and brick constructions constructed alongside Lifeless Cat Alley behind Important Road.
Paul Fong chops meals within the solitude of his kitchen on the Chicago Cafe.
(Carl Costas / For The Instances)
Paul Fong doesn’t know a lot about how his household got here to have a restaurant, and why on earth they known as it the Chicago Cafe. He was born within the Taishan space of Guangdong province lengthy after his grandfather had left, and so they by no means met. When Paul was nonetheless younger, his personal father left Taishan to affix his grandfather in Woodland; he, too, got here as a paper son, below the identify Yee Chong Pang.
In 1973, Paul and his mom joined his father on the restaurant, together with Nancy. They might have come earlier, however as a result of his father and grandfather had come as paper sons, there was forms to chop by even after passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, which lastly opened the doorways to immigration from Asia.
Paul got here to Woodland from Hong Kong, a mega-city that even in 1973 had a inhabitants that topped 4 million. Woodland was dwelling to only 20,000. It was a shock.
“In Hong Kong, so many individuals,” he recalled. The streets have been bustling, the nightlife vibrant. The liveliest factor about nightlife in Woodland have been the celebrities: The shortage of metropolis lights meant the celebrities sparkled extra brightly.
However Paul grew to like it. Although he spoke restricted English, he made mates. Amy recalled that luggage of freshly shot duck and truckloads of zucchini can be dropped off periodically on the restaurant door. When a household good friend by chance ran over a peacock, it additionally wound up on the restaurant — mounted on the wall, not on a plate.
Jerry Shaw has been an everyday on the Chicago Cafe for extra than 4 a long time.
(Carl Costas / For The Instances)
Andy stated his mother and father shared little through the years about how the household wound up in Woodland. He recalled going to go to the Woodland cemetery as a toddler to pay respects to his grandfather and being startled that the etching on the headstone stated “Younger” as an alternative of “Fong.” It was the primary he’d heard of paper sons.
The Fong kids went to the restaurant each afternoon after college. Wanting again on their childhood, they might respect it was a neighborhood establishment. Generations of households from all walks of Woodland life got here for lunch and particular occasions. At a latest Metropolis Council assembly, virtually each council member had a private story, some courting again a long time.
“My household grew up consuming on the Chicago Cafe,” stated Mayor Tania Garcia-Cadena. Councilwoman Vicky Fernandez recalled that her household did too. “Your doorways have at all times been open to all of us,” she stated, including that as a result of her household was Mexican American, that had not at all times been true of all of the eating places on the town.
Nancy Fong gathers substances throughout a crowded lunch service on the Chicago Cafe.
(Carl Costas / For The Instances)
Nonetheless, as proud as they have been of their legacy, Paul and Nancy have been at all times clear on one level: Their children wouldn’t be becoming a member of the household enterprise. “My dad explicitly instructed us that he wished us to go to school. Not do what he was doing, working so laborious,” Andy recalled.
When the time got here for the couple to retire, the Fong household deliberate to get out of the restaurant enterprise.
Ten miles down the street, in his workplace at King Corridor on the UC Davis campus, Chin stored fascinated with that signal above the counter that stated “since 1903.”
Chin grew up in Connecticut and doesn’t communicate Chinese language. However he was fascinated about previous Chinese language eating places for what they revealed in regards to the historical past of individuals of Chinese language descent and the authorized discrimination they confronted for therefore lengthy.
There are extra Chinese language eating places in the US than there are McDonald’s, and the meals they serve is remarkably constant given a lot of it will by no means be served in China.
“Numerous the meals that we consider as Chinese language are literally extra American and all however unknown in China: Normal Tso’s hen, beef with broccoli (broccoli is initially an Italian vegetable), chop suey, egg rolls, fortune cookies. Particularly fortune cookies,” journalist Jennifer 8. Lee defined in a 2008 essay about her e book, “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles.”
Torin Kranz bides his time in an aged walk-in cooler whereas his grandparents work the kitchen on the Chicago Cafe.
(Carl Costas / For The Instances)
That is very true on the Chicago Cafe, which serves sausage and eggs, pork chops and apple sauce and, on Fridays, clam chowder, together with conventional Chinese language American fare akin to chop suey and chow mein.
But when these previous eating places don’t reveal a lot about Chinese language meals, Chin stated, they do reveal lots about America.
As a regulation professor, Chin was fascinated about how elected officers and labor leaders had crafted legal guidelines to advance a bigger anti-immigration agenda.
In 2018, he and a colleague revealed a paper known as “The Struggle In opposition to Chinese language Eating places,” which laid out the modern authorized efforts — together with zoning, licensing and attempting to manage ladies’s actions — employed within the early twentieth century to drive Chinese language eating places out of enterprise.
Researching that paper made him keenly conscious of what number of Chinese language eating places had operated in America — and the way fleeting a lot of them have been. He knew most authorities believed the oldest constantly working Chinese language restaurant was the Pekin Noodle Parlor in Butte, Mont., which dated to 1909 or 1911.
If the Chicago Cafe began in 1903, that made it older.
Chin requested the Fong household whether or not he might usher in archivists to attempt to unravel the thriller? Positive, the household stated.
Paul Fong handles enterprise calls throughout a busy lunch service on the Chicago Cafe.
(Carl Costas / For The Instances)
A gaggle descended on the restaurant, digging into dusty cupboards, the attic and the previous storage room that included a mattress the place laborers used to seize naps. They pored over menus, tax receipts and letters. They dove into the archives of the Woodland Each day Democrat and previous yearbooks from Woodland Excessive College.
By final spring, Chin and his co-researchers had produced one other scholarly paper. “We imagine that that is the oldest frequently working Chinese language restaurant in the US,” Chin stated of his discovering.
The modest storefront on Important Road — with its cash-only coverage — all of a sudden had a brand new cachet. Vacationers got here from Sacramento and San Francisco. Locals got here flooding again.
“You possibly can’t even get in now,” stated Michelle Paschke, a longtime good friend whose household used to run a neighboring retailer. Paschke sat on the packed lunch counter on a latest afternoon, ready to pay. Throughout her, different patrons have been in the identical state of affairs, holding money out like supplicants whereas Olstad gestured that she can be there as shortly as she might.
“It’s been a blessing,” Andy stated of the overwhelming curiosity. “On the similar time,” he stated, “I do need my mother and father to loosen up. And considerably selfishly, I would like them to spend time with their grandchildren.”
Again within the kitchen, Paul and Nancy turned out plates with a lightning rhythm, honed over years of follow. “It’s good I suppose. It makes me fairly busy,” Paul stated of the lunch crowd.
Nonetheless, he added, he couldn’t do that endlessly. “I’m previous,” he stated, smiling.
However on today, he was nonetheless working, and the orders have been piling up. Nancy gestured to a plate of pork able to be fried. Paul stepped again to the grill.
