This was not, however, the end of banquets for our family. My sister-in-law Claudia’s family, Cantonese from San Francisco, had a favorite banquet restaurant of their own: formerly called May Flower and now called the Hong Kong Flower Lounge. It’s located just outside San Francisco, approximately an hour from where Hong Fu had been.
Flower Lounge is a much larger space than Hong Fu, able to seat up to 550 guests at a time. The Michelin Guide’s write-up seems clearly aimed at white diners, referring to it as a “palace of pork buns” patronized by “dim sum die hards.” But when I asked my mother about the Flower Lounge, she too spoke of it with reverence: “We moved to the Bay Area and it was impossible to get a table there!”
After Hong Fu closed, our joined families began to have celebrations at Flower Lounge—most memorably, my niece’s Red Egg Party, the Cantonese celebration of a baby’s 100th day. A lunch banquet menu for a Red Egg Party starts at $259 a table, with 10 people at each table. We ate seafood and bean curd soup; those walnut prawns; Peking duck two ways, including tender sautéed and minced duck in crispy lettuce cups; lobster with ginger and bright green onion; fried noodles with sliced chicken. Other banquets might include braised dried oysters with sprinkles of black moss; white fish, gathered live from tanks and steamed; panfried sticky rice, both chewy and crispy.
Why, I asked my sister-in-law, was her family always able to get a seat at the Hong Kong Flower Lounge without hassle? Her grandmother, she explained, had long ago taken care of the owner’s ailing wife. Though her grandmother passed away years ago, the restaurant continues to lavish the Ngs with affection.
When I was a child my family frequented a salad bar chain called Fresh Choice. It appealed to us because it was all-you-can-eat American food for under $10. In other words, it was a place for penny-pinching immigrants. It was also a place where a white woman once shouted at my mother to “go back to China, and take those brats with you.” My American-born brother and I were, of course, the brats.
I care about the continued existence of banquet halls, and Chinese restaurants that serve banquets, because they are the antidotes to Fresh Choice. In a country that prioritizes the white experience, they’re sites that speak to my cultural background, my upbringing. At a banquet restaurant I feel like a member of the in-group, linked to the place and flavors from which my ancestors came. These restaurants offer immigrants a chance to connect where they are comfortable, without the expectation to perform “being American” in a way that demands familiarity with customs, language, and foods. As much as my mother enjoyed discovering the taste of avocados and tiramisu when she moved to America, eating at Hong Fu was like putting on a warm, familiar robe. It felt like a sigh of relief to be served foods that reminded her of home. Today when I take a nonTaiwanese or non-Chinese guest to a banquet, it’s an invitation, a question. I’m asking, as one of my favorite poets Lucille Clifton writes,
“won’t you celebrate with me
what I have shaped into a kind of life?”
To celebrate a new job, or a birthday, or simply that we have survived.
Esmé Weijun Wang is the author of the ‘New York Times’ best-selling essay collection The Collected Schizophrenias.
This was not, however, the end of banquets for our family. My sister-in-law Claudia’s family, Cantonese from San Francisco, had a favorite banquet restaurant of their own: formerly called May Flower and now called the Hong Kong Flower Lounge. It’s located just outside San Francisco, approximately an hour from where Hong Fu had been.Flower Lounge is a much larger space than Hong Fu, able to seat up to 550 guests at a time. The Michelin Guide’s write-up seems clearly aimed at white diners, referring to it as a “palace of pork buns” patronized by “dim sum die hards.” But when I asked my mother about the Flower Lounge, she too spoke of it with reverence: “We moved to the Bay Area and it was impossible to get a table there!”After Hong Fu closed, our joined families began to have celebrations at Flower Lounge—most memorably, my niece’s Red Egg Party, the Cantonese celebration of a baby’s 100th day. A lunch banquet menu for a Red Egg Party starts at $259 a table, with 10 people at each table. We ate seafood and bean curd soup; those walnut prawns; Peking duck two ways, including tender sautéed and minced duck in crispy lettuce cups; lobster with ginger and bright green onion; fried noodles with sliced chicken. Other banquets might include braised dried oysters with sprinkles of black moss; white fish, gathered live from tanks and steamed; panfried sticky rice, both chewy and crispy.Why, I asked my sister-in-law, was her family always able to get a seat at the Hong Kong Flower Lounge without hassle? Her grandmother, she explained, had long ago taken care of the owner’s ailing wife. Though her grandmother passed away years ago, the restaurant continues to lavish the Ngs with affection.When I was a child my family frequented a salad bar chain called Fresh Choice. It appealed to us because it was all-you-can-eat American food for under $10. In other words, it was a place for penny-pinching immigrants. It was also a place where a white woman once shouted at my mother to “go back to China, and take those brats with you.” My American-born brother and I were, of course, the brats.I care about the continued existence of banquet halls, and Chinese restaurants that serve banquets, because they are the antidotes to Fresh Choice. In a country that prioritizes the white experience, they’re sites that speak to my cultural background, my upbringing. At a banquet restaurant I feel like a member of the in-group, linked to the place and flavors from which my ancestors came. These restaurants offer immigrants a chance to connect where they are comfortable, without the expectation to perform “being American” in a way that demands familiarity with customs, language, and foods. As much as my mother enjoyed discovering the taste of avocados and tiramisu when she moved to America, eating at Hong Fu was like putting on a warm, familiar robe. It felt like a sigh of relief to be served foods that reminded her of home. Today when I take a nonTaiwanese or non-Chinese guest to a banquet, it’s an invitation, a question. I’m asking, as one of my favorite poets Lucille Clifton writes, “won’t you celebrate with mewhat I have shaped into a kind of life?” To celebrate a new job, or a birthday, or simply that we have survived.Esmé Weijun Wang is the author of the ‘New York Times’ best-selling essay collection The Collected Schizophrenias.