A Chinese Restaurant Restaurant in Sioux City, Iowa (1979)

Though I began writing on Chinese American history topics back in 1969, it wasn't until almost 10 years later in early 1979 that I wrote my first article on anything to do with Chinese food, which sort of was a restaurant review, though even back then I was talking about food in a greater context.

“A Chinese Restaurant in Sioux City, Iowa" appeared in the January 31, 1979 issue of the weekly Chinese American newspaper out of San Francisco, East West Chinese-American Journal, and obviously there are no available online copies of this item until now.

 

HONG KONG RESTAURANT, 3105 N. Highway 75, Sioux City, Iowa

It seems that virtually any American city of any size has at least one Chinese restaurant.  However, once one leaves the major Chinese population centers, the quality of the Chinese restaurant food becomes quite marginal, the sophistication of the customers (insofar as Chinese food is concerned) becomes lower, and the available ingredients become limited.

Sioux City, Iowa is an unlikely place to find a good Chinese restaurant.  Located in Western Iowa near the Nebraska and South Dakota borders, the Chinese population there is sparse, numbering no more than a handful of families.  Though there has been a Chinese population in Sioux City for decades most of the current Chinese residents are recent arrivals in Sioux City, so there is no deep-rooted Chinese community.  The closest Chinatown is some 500 miles away in Chicago and one has to go a good 200 to 300 miles to find any numbers of Chinese.

The Hong Kong Restaurant has operated in Sioux City for quite a number of years, and is the only Cantonese restaurant in the Sioux City area.   (There is a Mandarin restaurant operated by a Taiwanese family in downtown Sioux City.)  The present owners have been in Sioux City for a couple of years, buying it from an older gentlemen who abandoned the restaurant business to open an import goods store in downtown Sioux City.  (His shop with large Chinese characters hanging over the sidewalk in downtown Sioux City is quite a strange sight.)

The new owners came to Sioux City from San Francisco, moving to Iowa when they got the opportunity to buy an established Chinese restaurant.  For one who is used to dining in the Chinatowns of Los Angeles and San Francisco, the Hong Kong Restaurant is a bit of a cultural shock.  It is located on the edge of town on U.S. Highway 75, north of the Sioux Bee Honey Factory and among the grain elevators which are such a common sight in the region.

Adding to the incongruity is the fact that the customers are served by Caucasian waitresses.  (Indeed this incongruity is surpassed only by some Chinese restaurants in the South, which employ black waitresses.)  The menu at the Hong Kong Restaurant is strictly geared to the American public -- chow mein, fried rice and so on.  But notwithstanding all of this, the flavors are outstanding, especially considering the lack of available Chinese foodstuffs.  For example, the dish known throughout the Midwest as "YETCAMEIN' (i.e. Yat Gaw Mein) is made using the kind of dry-packaged oriental noodles we see in American restaurants, since fresh noodles can't be obtained.

Working around this handicap, the Hong Kong Restaurant puts the noodles in a superb gravy sauce, resulting in one of the better Chinese noodle dishes I have ever encountered in a Chinese restaurant.  Adding to the quality of the dishes is the fact that the dishes are largely prepared from scratch after the customer orders.  The result is a rather annoying wait of nearly a half-hour before being served, but in the end it's worth the wait.

Despite its unlikely location, the Hong Kong Restaurant qualifies as a quality Chinese restaurant, and was a welcome surprise for one who didn't expect to find a good Chinese meal within 500 miles.  

 

 

 

 

(Note:  My picture of the Hong Kong Restaurant from my visit was not part of the published article.  Indeed I had no recollection that I had taken this picture at the time, and only rediscovered last month when I decided to republish this article and decided to comb through the my archives of over 10,000 Kodachrome slides on the oft chance that I may have taken a picture.  Imagine my joy when I found this!)