Chef Kathy Fang spent her entire childhood in the streets and markets of San Francisco's Chinatown — mostly within the walls of House of Nanking, the cozy restaurant her parents started in 1988, not long after emigrating from China. Her father, Peter Fang, was the only chef, cooking for all their patrons in a single wok at the front of the small building. Her mother, Lily, was often running to the neighborhood Chinese market for fresh ingredients, sometimes twice in one day.
House of Nanking initially specialized in traditional Shanghainese home-style cooking, though Peter wasn't afraid to lean into the tastes and flavors his customers wanted. From the ripe old age of 7, Kathy was Peter's guinea pig and in-house critic. "I basically taste tested everything my dad made," she tells NPR. "I was his sounding board."
Though the restaurant is a beloved mainstay of the neighborhood today, Peter says business was slow in the early days — until a rave review in the San Francisco Chronicle changed everything overnight. "All of a sudden, it was 'BOOM!," he says, and there were lines out the door.
Now 76 years old, Peter continues to run House of Nanking with his taste-tester-turned-business partner, Kathy, a renowned chef in her own right. She has starred in her own show on the Food Network and judged various cooking competitions. The two also co-own Fang, another restaurant just about a mile away.
For the first time in 37 years, they are sharing their culinary secrets in a new cookbook, House of Nanking: Family Recipes from San Francisco's Favorite Chinese Restaurant.
Kathy and Peter Fang sat down with All Things Considered host Ailsa Chang inside House of Nanking to reflect on building the restaurant into the icon it is today.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Ailsa Chang: Peter, how does it feel to have this book out in the world — sharing your tips, your secrets, your life story?
Peter Fang: I feel very, very proud of my daughter, first of all. Kathy did all the writing inside the book. So that means people can learn from there and then remember it. Otherwise, I'm getting older, some of the things that I do, I never really put them in writing, but my daughter did that. I think that's good.
You see, food, cooking, it's a part of life. When you are a little baby, you start growing, you have lots of memories with the food. So it's like a picture.
Chang: A picture of your family. Meals mark time and mark memories.
Peter Fang: Yeah. I'm 76 years old. When I see some of these snacks, things that my mom made for me when I was a little one, I stand here and remember that smell.
Chang: Sometimes when we talk about Chinese restaurants in America, it's almost shorthand for a generic, very basic Chinese food, right? Like to suit the American palate. What do you think makes your restaurant, House of Nanking, so different from that kind of Chinese restaurant?
Peter Fang: This is a question I ask myself all the time. So the basic, traditional things, the Chinese cooking philosophy doesn't change. But the ingredients, the place you're in — for example, in the United States, in San Francisco — there are local ingredients, some of the things that you don't have in China. So you have to use the local ingredients, to learn how to use them. And you have to study what the people want.
Chang: And you think it's a good idea to adapt your cooking to please people? Because some chefs say, "This is the way I cook. If you don't like it, you don't need to come."
Peter Fang: I understand that. A lot of chefs say, "I don't care if you like it or you dislike it," but I think that sometimes it's not right.
Kathy Fang: The way that we treat the dining room is the way that we would treat, like, if you invited guests to your home, right? So it's the same thing here. Everybody that walks through our restaurant is our guest in our home, because let's face it, this is our home, right? Like we spend more time here than our actual home. If you come to my house, you're going to leave happy.
Chang: Kathy, what was it like to grow up around House of Nanking when you were a little girl?
Kathy Fang: I think in the very beginning, it was very exciting and new to me. I was seeing the restaurant getting built — my dad built all the shelves himself — so I saw something kind of come to life from nothing. And then I got to kind of experience the food that my dad was creating, how it started to evolve and change, the smells. I learned how to interact with people. It was just a very rambunctious and lively place to grow up in. And then I think, as I got older, my parents knew that this was a very tough life, and they came here to give me better opportunities. So I never thought I would actually come back and do this. It wasn't until later when I worked in corporate America when I realized, this is incredibly boring, uninspiring, and not exciting. What I grew up with was something that was far more exciting, so I came back.
Chang: Peter, how does it make you feel to watch your daughter do what you're doing, to eventually come back and enter the restaurant business and really appreciate the way she grew up and make it a permanent part of her own life?
Peter Fang: First of all, I'm proud of my daughter. I think she is going to be better than me, in many ways.
Chang: Kathy, your dad says he's so proud of you watching what you're doing now. What is it like to share his legacy with him now, to work alongside him?
Kathy Fang: It's sort of like I'm making up for all the lost time that we had when I was younger, because he and my mom were both at the restaurant every single day. As I got older, I couldn't stay here as much as when I was younger. And now, I feel like I'm making up for all of that time now [that] we see each other all the time. I see my dad probably more than I see my husband. And the legacy aspect, I think is very special because everything that they were able to build here is pretty remarkable given their circumstances, their upbringing, what they had when they got here. They were able to build an institution that has become like an icon in the city, right? I get to be a part of it. And I happen to be good at it. There's no way my dad would let me even touch this if I was not good at it. So yeah, I can continue it on for them.
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