Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants by Professor Of Psychology Emeritus John Jung

Author:Professor Of Psychology Emeritus John Jung [Jung, Professor Of Psychology Emeritus John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Chinese restaurants, history, General
ISBN: 9781257205318
Google: P99LCAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Lulu Press, Inc
Published: 2013-03-13T23:59:35.573522+00:00

Figure 45 New Shanghai Restaurant, 1990. Courtesy, Julie Wong Hornsby.

John L’s Restaurant, San Antonio, Tx.

Figure 46 John L’s, San Antonio, Tx. Courtesy, Dora Leung.

J

ohn L, as his customers called John Leung, and I, his wife Dora, owned and operated a popular Chinese take out business for many years. He was a second generation Chinese born in San Antonio, Texas in 1921, and I am a third generation Chinese-American, born in Duluth, Minnesota. We grew up in San Antonio, graduated from high school together, and married soon after and raised four children, three daughters and a son.

“John L” is a rather unusual name for a café that served Chinese food, but that is perhaps in keeping with the fact that our restaurant was not your typical Chinese chop suey joint. In fact, originally a retail grocery business, it received a makeover into a restaurant that not only offer Chinese dishes, but also had dishes from other ethnic backgrounds.

The story of how our grocery store was transformed into a café was not one involving a planned change but one that happened almost by surprise. When we built our grocery store, my father- in-law made it an ice station so that we could open and sell beer from the facilities on Sundays. We sold everything a small grocery store would sell, from canned goods to fresh meat and vegetables. The store was located on a large busy street in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. Our customers were mainly people from the neighborhood. We did all of the work ourselves. My husband did the butchering for the meat market and took care of all of the heavy work while I manned the cash register and cared for the vegetables and fruit area. We raised our children at the store, especially when they were young, but lived in a house on the other side of town.

Over the years, many large businesses and warehouses that grew up around us. Soon many of the workers and office people began to come into the store for luncheon supplies, such as lunchmeat, loaves of bread, fruit, chips and drinks. This became a good part of our business. One of the regular customers who came into the store for lunch supplies one day said, jokingly, "Why don’t you just make the sandwiches for us? Then we don't have to do this everyday, John L." He began to ponder the idea and liked the suggestion, so the next day, he made some pressed ham and cheese sandwiches to see how it would sell that day. He discovered that one loaf of sandwich bread made thirteen sandwiches, which he sold for twenty-five cents a sandwich. That day, the sandwiches sold so well that we were launched into a new business.

Our time, the menu expanded to offer many different sandwiches, ham and cheese, salami or bologna with cheese, and Mexican French Roll Poor-Boys. I began to make things that went along with these sandwiches. I prepared homemade potato salad, macaroni salad, chicken salad and tuna salad.

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