Heartbreak in the City: Beloved 63-Year-Old Chinese Restaurant Closes Its Doors

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The oldest Chinese restaurant in Dallas has closed its doors after 63 years leaving regulars heartbroken.

Hong Kong Restaurant, known for its orange chicken and egg foo yung, first opened in 1962.

The restaurant changed hands several times over the years and its most recent owned by Andy Tran who chose to retire.

Back in the 1960's the restaurant was credited with introducing Dallasites to Chinese cuisine and claiming to offer '101 authentic Chinese foods.'

One of its adverts told diners if they 'didn't think theirs was the best Chinese food they'd ever eaten, they wouldn't have to pay,' the Dallas Morning News reported.

The restaurant's original owner Bill Pon immigrated to the US in 1928 and worked at a number of restaurants over the years.

His grandson Justin told WFAA news that Bill travelled the world learning to cook and even returned to China for a period to refine his skills.

'Bill kind of worked his way up through the Chinese food scene in California. At one point, he was a chef at a hotel in San Francisco, where he was able to serve First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt,' Stephanie Drenka, the director of the Dallas Asian American Historical Society told the outlet.

'It was kind of his dream to open up restaurants. He had a lot of aspirations. He wanted to do cooking classes, and he did,' Justin recalled.

Justin explained how Bill would invite school groups in to the restaurant to teach the children how to make egg rolls and wontons.

'He was basically breaking social barriers to have a nice dining experience that people who weren't familiar with the food could go and get acquainted with eating Chinese food.'

'I'm happy that restaurant's been a part of so many people's lives, and I'm also happy that there have been so many other families that have had that as their kind of American dream,' Justin added.

Locals also expressed their gratitude for the restaurant and shared their memories online following the closure in May.

'I have a ton of memories from this place. My work crew and I ate there weekly for years. The lady that regularly waited on us had all of our orders memorized down to the specific omissions,' one nostalgic diner wrote on Reddit.

We ordered delivery almost every week from Hong Kong for years. My husband and I joked that we may have singled handedly kept them open through the dark days of 2020,' another added.

'They always added special treats to our order.'