From Merrill Lynch to the Wok Station: The Daughter of San Francisco’s Chinese Culinary Dynasty Who Defied Her Parents by Working Alongside Them

Peter FangThe legendary restaurant patriarch and his wife didn’t build Nanking House so their daughter could inherit it, Kathy Fang said. Fortune in a recent interview. For them, cooking was a necessity born of survival, not a career choice for educated people. “My parents being very traditional, they didn’t want me to do it either,” she explained. “Actually, we have a saying that, you know, if you don’t do well in school, you can always become a cook, because it’s considered manual labor. You don’t have to have a proper education to go work in a kitchen.”

Her parents are unfamiliar with “foodie” culture, she explained, and don’t even know how famous they have become. Talk to Fortune as she releases the very first cookbook dedicated to her family’s restaurant, she said even that was a struggle.

“It took me decades,” she said, to convince her father to accept her. “He thought that if he shared his recipes, people would prepare them at home and not come to restaurants anymore. » He didn’t understand that his restaurant was a San Francisco institution, frequented by the likes of Francis Ford Coppola and Keanu Reeves, celebrities his father wouldn’t recognize — and didn’t recognize anyway.

Michael Robinson Chavez/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Fang, who recently turned 40, said Reeves had been her favorite actor since high school, and the first time he went to her family’s restaurant, she begged her father not to make him wait in the line that stretched around the block, as he did every night. His response was that “everyone queue up” until she promised to get straight A’s, and he relented. What happened next summed it all up.

“[My dad] walks up to him and says something to him. Then he looks at me and says, “Kathy, come take a picture with him.” It’s Sean Connery. And I’m like, “Oh, my God.” My dad doesn’t know anyone, but he’s heard of Sean Connery. Reeves, who is known for his politeness and good heart, told the Fangs he was “really flattered.”

“We took a photo that day and that photo hangs on the wall of the restaurant,” Fang said happily. “But the story is that no one knows the famous people who go in there.” As a born and raised Californian, she would know all the celebrities, she added, but she is always busy, running her own restaurant, Fangin the SoMa business district, about a 20-minute walk. Croc and Reeves recreate the photo 29 years later, as shown by the Instagram of Maison de Nankin.

Kathy Fang is a busy businesswoman. In addition to running her restaurant Fang and publishing a cookbook, she is a two-time Food Network star. Ax champion and cast member of “Dynasty of Chiefs: House of Fang.” San Francisco Magazine even crowned her “culinary queen“, and she is the mother of two children with her husband who, she notes, doesn’t even like Chinese food. She spoke to Fortune about how she disappointed her parents by failing to become a doctor or lawyer – and ultimately discovered how proud they were of her through her reality TV work.

A call to a crowded kitchen

Like many immigrants to the United States (the Fangs moved from the Shanghai area to San Francisco), the Fangs pushed Kathy toward a stable and prestigious future.

“They wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer [or] “Enter the corporate world,” she said. She dutifully followed that path to the University of Southern California as a pre-med student, only to discover that while she didn’t fear cooking oil in a giant wok, she didn’t have the stomach for medicine.

“I realized I was terrified of needles, like I was upset about hospitals,” she said. “That would be a problem. Yes, to this day I still don’t see a needle going into an arm.”

She then landed in the corporate world, working at a Fortune 100 company. Johnson & Johnson and Wall Street stalwart Merrill Lynch. But the corporate environment left her uninspired. When she finally called her father to tell him she was leaving her job to return to the family restaurant, he was baffled and upset. “He said, ‘Why, were you fired or something?'” Kathy recalled, and she said, “No, I really don’t like what I do and I love food, I love cooking and I miss that kind of environment.”

The environment he lacked was one of organized chaos and high-pressure efficiency. Although she declined to disclose financials and acknowledged that Fang has struggled more during the pandemic (like many restaurants), she acknowledged that her family’s restaurant is a “cash cow” that has served an estimated 5 to 6 million people over its 38 years in business, quite a feat considering its small footprint.

“It’s difficult when you think about the size of the restaurant when it started,” she said, noting that it could only seat 30 to 40 people during its first decade in business. “And the kitchen can only accommodate two to three people.” Since then, the size of his dining room has doubled, but “the kitchen hasn’t changed at all. It’s just a little wild.”

A business career to be proud of

Kathy’s return marks a turning point for the brand. While Peter Fang had built the restaurant’s reputation through his culinary ingenuity, the family was media shy, unlike their telegenic, media-savvy daughter. She said she was approached to try food television and saw it as something that allowed her to share her family’s story.

“I felt like I was kind of helping build this brand that my parents had already built,” she said. “Everyone knows about House of Nanking, but they’ve never done anything about it. They’ve never done any marketing or PR about it.”

His involvement proved to his father that the business could be multi-generational, alleviating his fears that the restaurant would disappear when he could no longer work.

“My father now knows that this is something that can continue across generations,” Kathy notes, adding that he even considers his 8-year-old granddaughter as a potential future successor.

Fang said strangers and restaurant patrons came up to her and said, “Your father is so proud of you,” and about three years ago, she recalled, while filming the film. Dynasty of chiefs show, his father said during a recap interview in the green room: “I’m just very proud.” But she never heard it directly from him. “My father will never tell me, and it’s a very Chinese thing, they will never compliment you to your face.”

The restaurateur explained that one of her main tasks now is to manage her parents’ workload. Now in their 70s, they both still work lunch and dinner every day. The fact is, Fang noted, that the 18-month hiatus during the pandemic revealed that retirement may not be an option; During the lockdown, Kathy’s mother, Lily, co-founder of the restaurant, developed health problems because she was no longer on her feet all day, and her father remained completely silent.

“My dad lost his voice because he used it every day and his vocal cords were getting weak,” Kathy said. “It’s like crazy… As soon as he got back to work and started using his voice again, it came back.”

She said there are no plans for them to slow down anytime soon. “They like routine. Staying at home is not good for them. They too, because they work every day, have never developed hobbies or made friends,” she says with a laugh.

There are also no plans to expand further. Kathy said she respected her father’s wish to keep the business small and limited to Chinatown, avoiding any sort of nationwide expansion.

“I won’t do it if my father doesn’t want me to,” she said. “It would kind of lose that essence and that soul.”