In July 2000, his brother Gee Leong closed Gee’s East Wind. In 1997, after the death of his wife, Wong Shau Ngor, David Leong closed Leong’s Tea House. By the 1970s, the Leong family dish had become such a part of the Springfield culinary ethic that the curriculum at Graff Vocational Technical Center included instruction in the cooking and serving of hillbilly steak sandwiches, chocolate cream pies and, yes, cashew chicken.Īt the moment, no Leong family member runs a Springfield kitchen. First came other Chinese, then a large influx of Vietnamese. Throughout the 1970s, other Asian families immigrated to Springfield. And Cheong Leong, David’s oldest son, opened and closed a number of restaurants named House of Cheong, some of which were housed in former Whataburger franchises. In 1972, when the brothers parted ways, Gee Leong opened Gee’s East Wind, on the same street, on the opposite end of town. According to David Leong, the secret ingredient was peanut butter.) Inspired by the economy of the dish and the success of the teahouse, a number of cashew-chicken-centric restaurants followed the Leongs’ lead. The Leongs bounced back, repairing the damage quickly and opening the 350-seat white-tablecloth restaurant within a couple of weeks.Ĭredit. But, as was the case with many incidents of bigotry-born violence in the 1960s, no convictions followed. In November 1963, less than a week before the new restaurant was set to open, someone tossed 10 sticks of dynamite at the base of the low-slung building and stole the lion statues that flanked the front door. “They thought all Asians were Japanese kamikazes.” “This was not long after the war,” David Leong said. And some locals suspected the motives of Asian immigrants. That new place, Leong’s Tea House, set on the suburban fringe of town in what had recently been a cornfield, didn’t come easily. Wasn’t long before he was begging me to come back. “Bill Grove didn’t want to pay me to cook,” David Leong said of the owner. I gave them fried chicken with Chinese oyster sauce and cashews.”Īfter six years at the Grove, the brothers departed. “When I moved here in the 1950s, people kept telling me about fried chicken,” Mr. And, inspired by similar Chinese dishes, David Leong experimented with the dish that would become cashew chicken. They dished up sweet and sour pork and moo goo gai pan. A year later the brothers were cooking at the Grove, a supper club famous for T-bones and highballs. Tsang lured David Leong and his brother, Gee Leong, to Springfield to open the region’s first Chinese restaurant, Lotus Garden. Leong met a Springfield neurosurgeon, John L. Kevin O’Riley for The New York TimesĪt Pirate’s Cove, a Pensacola restaurant where he honed a reputation for broiled scallops and flounder braised in sweet and sour sauce, Mr. Leong's version is now a city favorite, served at restaurants like Canton Inn and Heritage Cafeteria, where Kulwant Hundal, below, serves it. More than 70 Chinese restaurants in this city of 157,000 serve cashew chicken, from Lucy’s Chinese Food, a three-location chain owned by brothers John and Tom Gregoroski, to the Canton Inn, a converted Dunkin’ Donuts where Chiwa and Foon Wong keep a pot of chicken stock simmering on the stove and the cashew chicken special costs $3.75. It’s a weekday plate lunch, accompanied by fried rice and an egg roll. It’s a weeknight dinner, bought from a drive-through. Around Springfield, cashew chicken deep-fried chicken chunks in a brown slurry of soy sauce, oyster sauce and stock, scattered with green onions and halved cashews is the culinary common denominator. Leong nearly a half-century ago, is not the stir-fry served by many Chinese-American restaurants. From my family.”Ĭashew chicken, in the form first cooked by Mr. Leong, the 88-year-old patriarch of the Chinese food industry here. “All this came from my cashew chicken,” said Mr. Yen’s, a 560-seat palace of Chinese cooking owned by a family friend, David Leong scanned the red clay pagoda roof and rose-colored walls and staked a claim that few here in the Ozarks would dispute.
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