But that was decades ago, and since then, they have been running their family’s business on Atlantic Avenue in Bixby Knolls.
Le Yen, which has been a staple in the neighborhood since 1970, will close its doors later this month after providing longtime customers with the Chan Family’s special brand of Cantonese cuisine. Chan and Woo say the time has come for them to move on with other endeavors, including finding time to rest.
“We’re celebrating our 45th year, and we thought it would be a good time,” Woo explained. “We’ve had a really good run.”
Last Tuesday, the brother and sister sat down with the Signal Tribune to share their family’s story, in between mid-afternoon customers.
“My parents came here from southern China— Canton,” Woo said. “In 1946, my grandfather and my uncles opened The Tea Garden in Belmont Shore, and they were there up until [about] a year and a half ago. When my grandfather retired, he gave it to his two sons, which is my uncle and my father. But in 1970, my father decided to come here and open a new restaurant in Bixby Knolls.”
Chan and Woo explained that, prior to their family opening their restaurant in the space, it had been the site of a Hamburger Henry’s, and before that, it was a soda fountain.
“Back then, when Hamburger Henry’s was here, each booth had a telephone,” Woo said. “So, [customers] used to call in to the kitchen for their order. My dad said that was the first thing he took out, so he wouldn’t be stressed out.”
“And a switchboard,” Chan added.
“And a switchboard that was in the kitchen,” Woo acknowledged. “I remember a huge box of telephones going out in the trash.”
Woo recalled the night the eatery opened.
“I remember opening night my dad rented [one of] those big spotlights that go in the sky,” she said. “And there was a huge crowd of people.”
While their father, Raymond, and their Uncle Loy ran things in the kitchen, their mother, Linda, managed “the front of the house,” as they say in the restaurant business. (Chan later assumed the responsibility of overseeing the kitchen, and Woo took over her mother’s job.)
“They were original recipes from the 1940s,” Woo said. “That’s why a lot of people come here and they go, ‘Oh, my God. These recipes are from the old days.’ A lot of people don’t have this kind of food. There’s a few people that we’ve mentioned to them that we’re closing and they say, ‘Where else can I go to get food like this?’ and I go, ‘Well, not really anybody else makes it this way.'”
Siblings Susan Woo and Kenny Chan will close Le Yen later this month. The restaurant has been in their family since they were children.
Woo said a major difference between Le Yen’s food and others’ is that her family often uses bean sprouts in lieu of noodles, and those sprouts with vegetables for the chow mein with crispy noodles on the side.
Woo noted that many younger people nowadays have grown accustomed to fast-food Chinese and have a hard time appreciating Le Yen’s
brand of cuisine.
Although plans are still being worked out and the new owners aren’t yet ready to publicize, Chan and Woo did reveal that the business taking over the location will indeed be another restaurant. They said Le Yen will likely close on July 28, but the decision is up to their father and uncle.
As for what she will do now that they will no longer be serving the community their family’s recipes, Woo indicated that rest will be the main focus.
“I have a few options,” Woo said. “It’s still kind of up in the air. Take some time off to relax because— I was telling one of my friends that I haven’t had more than, like, three weekends off a year since I was like 16. Because we only take two weeks of vacation a year— a week in the summer for Fourth of July, and we always take a week off in the winter for Christmas. Most of our customers know we shut the restaurant down. We have a small staff, and everyone wants to be with their family, so we just close it up.”
[aesop_image img=”http://www.signaltribunenewspaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Le-Yen-closing-for-JUMP.jpg” credit=”Cory Bilicko/Signal Tribune” align=”right” lightbox=”on” caption=”Siblings Susan Woo and Kenny Chan will close Le Yen later this month. The restaurant has been in their family since they were children.” ” captionposition=”right”] After asked if Le Yen has had any longtime employees, Woo asks the busser nearby.
“How long have you been here, Salva?” she asked Salvador Chacon, who responded by saying he’s been with the restaurant for 29 years.
“We’ve been really fortunate that a lot of our workers have been here a long time,” Woo said. “Like the chef.”
Chacon, who easily rattles off the number of years the employees have worked there, indicated that the cook, Octavio, has worked for Le Yen for 23 years. After Woo said that the cook’s uncle had worked there before him, Chacon immediately noted that the uncle had been employed there for 33 years.
Chan described having a restaurant in Bixby Knolls is “enjoyable” because of the customers that he has seen pass through their door.
The primary one that comes to mind is an elderly man who would dine there alone twice a week.
“We had a longtime customer named Clarence Warner,” Chan said. “For over 30 years, he would come every Tuesday and Thursday.”
“Between 6:00 and 7:30 and sit in that seat,” Woo added, pointing to a particular table on the north side of the restaurant. “We’d always save him the table. He’d come from Huntington Beach.”
“He would come by himself all the time,” Chan said. “He would come all the way from Huntington Beach. He was doing it till he was like 90.”
Chan and Woo said Warner passed away last year, then something special happened.
“All his friends came in here and had dinner in memory of him,” Woo said, adding that Warner had also become close to their cousin that had also worked in the restaurant.
Four decades in business, it seems, can redefine the meaning of a “family restaurant.” Not only has the Chan Family worked together and passed the responsibilities on to their younger generations, but, as in Warner’s case, new familial relationships are forged through experiences that began with food. Then there are the families that Woo and Chan have watched grow up in their restaurant.
“We’ve had third generations of families come in,” he said. “It’s been a while. People who came as kids bring their grandkids. It’s fun to see. It’s going to be hard letting go of our customers after all these years.”
