Jein Ming Wang had been prepared to close on Christmas Eve. Then the phone call came. A business owner wanted to throw a last-minute holidy party for his employees. Could Chef Wang’s accommodate a party of 22?
Fitting them all in would be tricky; the Hermosa Beach eatery is only 400 square feet, including kitchen. So Jein Ming borrowed some chairs from nearby Fritto Misto, arranged tables like tetris pieces, and the 22 co-workers ate stir-fried shrimp with broccoli and Hunan-style beef, elbow-to-elbow. The party was a hit, and the company came back on Christmas Eve for years.
Staying open has never a problem at Chef Wang’s. Jein Ming and her husband Chien Chung Wang have dedicated their lives to the Pier Avenue Chinese restaurant for the past 29 years. In that time, Chien Chung has never taken a vacation, and Jein Ming has taken a grand total of three.
But come July, they will be finally be closing up shop. The business has rented the space on a month-to-month basis since 1995, and the property management company gave them a six month notice in January.
Jein Ming said that while she is sad to close — she wanted to stay one more year for an even 30 before retiring — what she will miss most is the interaction with her regular customers. Their dedication has touched her. (A man once grabbed a takeout order on his way to the hospital with his wife, who was going into labor.) And they have helped her build a life in her time at Chef Wang’s, which funded college and graduate school for her two sons.
“My two boys, they would say, ‘You can retire, why keep working?’” Jein Ming said. “But if I retire, I’ll miss my customers.”
Jein Ming and her husband, Chien Chung, hail from Taiwan. Before coming to California, they lived in New York City’s Chinatown. While there, Chien Chung worked as a dishwasher at a Chinese restaurant that many believe was the place where the now-famous dish of General Tso’s Chicken was invented. Chien Chung learned to cook there, and General Tso’s is now a favorite at Chef Wang’s.
But after a few years in the Big Apple, Jein Ming decided the winters were simply too much to take.
“I told him, If you still want to stay in New York City, I want a divorce,” she said with a laugh.
Chef Wang’s began life in 1987 as a pizzeria and chicken rotisserie, but there was too much competition — at the time, a pizza place filled the area where Rockefeller now sits — so they switched to the food Chien Chung had learned in Chinatown.
The pizzeria became Ragin Cajun, but Chef Wang’s built a following and soldiered on. In her time there, Jein Ming has seen many businesses, and people, come and go. The space currently containing the wine store Uncorked once held a small Korean market, and Fritto Misto used to be a Japanese restaurant.
“It was not like it is right now,” Jein Ming. “Lots of my old customers, they moved out because rent was too expensive.”
But plenty of regulars managed to stick around for the long haul. Lindsay Rose, a Hermosa resident and regular at Chef Wang’s since it opened, said she will miss the personal touches that the restaurant provides, like the fruit Jein Ming often brought from her garden.
“It’s so cool to have a little Chinese place in the neighborhood,” Rose said. “There’s a million taco and coffee spots, but nothing like this. I’m going to miss the place.”
Other regulars saw the closing Chef Wang’s as part of a broader trend. Joseph Lennon McCord, a Redondo Beach resident whom Jein Ming dubbed “Sweet and Sour Joe,” said the loss of the restaurant was “one more mark on the gravestone of the old beach.”
“It just felt like going to a mom and pop business, which it is,” McCord said. “I hate to see one more business like that go down.”
