Cecilia Chiang, a Shanghai-born restaurateur who revolutionized the national food scene with her approach to northern Chinese cuisine, died this week. San Francisco Chronicle Reports. She was 100 years old.
Born on September 18, 1920, to a wealthy Wuxi family, Chiang was raised in a 52-room mansion in Beijing. During China’s war with Japan, Ching and his sister, the “peasant disguise” (Sawyer wrote in 2000) fled hundreds of miles to Sichuan. He was the first to escape from war-torn areas, as Chiang – then married Chiang Liang – fled Japan, and again to the U.S.
In the late 1950s, Chiang visited her sister in San Francisco, where she met two aspiring restaurateurs who asked for her help in opening a restaurant on Polk Street. Marine Independent-Journal Written in 2007. He invested 10,000 and signed the lease, thinking it was over … but then his partners backed him up.
“I decided I would try my best,” Chiang wrote in his memoir, Seventh daughter. “First I will try to make the restaurant a success. Then I will tell Chiang Liang. The restaurant was Mandarin, opened with a menu of about 300 dishes, which was very much the voice of the Chinese takot and delivery spots that dominated the market at the time. Speaking to Belinda Leong, founder of B. Patissary, Chiang says he was told, “You don’t drink Cantonese food. You don’t serve chop sue; People know that only Chinese food chops sue. ‘I said,’ I’m just trying my best. ‘ I want to introduce real Chinese food to America. This is how I did it. “
The service was also more developed than Americans expected, Chiang says. “All my waiters were from UC Berkeley, spoke good English, were from really nice families. The days when you went to Chinatown: ‘Sweet and sour pork, No. 2.’ They say numbers to serve. In those days, they put the plate down, just threw it on the table. No tablecloth, no carpet in Chinatown. No seats, just benches. ”
Within a year, Mandarin had received local notable hits such as novelist Cway Lee and newspaper columnist Herb Kane, a level of success that helped Chiang decide to increase his investment in SF. She sent for her children and bought a home in St. Francis Wood, reportedly the first non-white homeowner in the neighborhood.
By 1968, the mandarin was out of its dugout, and Chiang relocated the restaurant to a 300-seat space inside the next new Girardley Square complex. The design of the luxury dining room is reported to be about one million dollars (adjusted for inflation, which today is about .5 7.5 million). He opened a second mandarin reunion in Beverly Hills in 1975, which served Hollywood glitter, and in the 80s he opened a Mandrate Chinese cafe with his son Philip, who eventually found PF Chang’s chain.
He sold Mandarin in 1991, but remained active in the business, writing two books, winning the James Beard Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013, and traveling with people like Alice Waters, whom Chiang calls “very good friends.” We’ve stayed with Europe … maybe five times. We have covered all these three star Michelin restaurants. And one day we went to a restaurant in Europe that was hard to enter. But someone James Dard said that if we really want to go, he can call someone and make a reservation for us. ”
In 2014, it was the subject of a documentary by Ching Fun Luck Club Director Van Wang called Banquet SoulIs, in which she tells the story of her life as she prepares a special dinner for Chase Panese’s 40th birthday. (It’s available on Amazon Prime Video.)
She was also a regular on the scene at San Francisco meals and events, with frequent appearances in the open and on the cheeks. At the age of 98, she said, “I go out a lot with friends. I love to eat … I think it’s very important to have really good friends, especially when you get older, because your own children are getting married. Yes, there are children, they migrate somewhere. You need good friends to keep you company. “About a decade ago, this correspondent met S.F. Shared a table at the Restaurant Week event, during which some of the city’s biggest names landed in .10. She said everyone’s name was just before they introduced themselves, and was unduly kind.
Speaking with Leong in 2018, Chiang said she was repeatedly asked how she could live such a long, fruitful life. He said, “The first thing I must say is, I have to thank my ancestors.” “We have good genes. … The other thing is that I try to learn Chinese moderation. I really believe: never overeat, or never overeat. Never overdo it. “
