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David Fong keeps reaping restaurant honors and customers
After 47 years in business, he has been named a local legend and the eatery has been named one of the top 100 of its kind in the nation.
Donna Halvorsen, Star Tribune

In his 20s, David Fong was looking for a restaurant location in Richfield, but he got lost and ended up in Bloomington. He saw a storefront for rent and started a small Chinese takeout place that would become a popular full-service restaurant in the booming first-ring suburb.
Along the way, Fong became a local icon in 47 years of hospitality and charitable generosity in his adopted community.

And the restaurant with Fong's name is listed among the Top 100 Chinese Restaurants in USA for 2005, chosen from 40,889 Chinese restaurants across the country. Fong received the award in October. In November he was among eight "local legends" inducted into the newly established Minnesota Hospitality Hall of Fame along with other longtimers in the restaurant business.

"We're really, really honored," Fong said last week. "I really thank the city of Bloomington and the people of Bloomington for giving us this opportunity."

Bloomington was just a village in 1958 when David Fong opened his takeout at 98th Street and Lyndale Avenue. If he had a crystal ball, he could have foreseen what a good business decision he had made. Bloomington became a city, and its population nearly tripled from 1955 to 1970.

Fong came to this country from China in 1948 as a boy of 14 with his mother and two siblings. His father had come earlier and was running Moy's Cafe in north Minneapolis. David and his wife, Helen, after eight years of takeout, moved four blocks up the street to start a full service restaurant at 94th and Lyndale in 1966. They served American as well as Cantonese-style Chinese food to accommodate sometimes timid palates.

"There weren't a lot of kinds of cuisines at that time," said son Edward Fong, who runs the restaurant now. "Most of (the restaurants) were fancy steak houses, or breakfast and lunch places or supper clubs."

Edward said the business relies on word of mouth and repeat customers: "As people have moved out of Bloomington, they've still come back here to visit us," he said.

David and Helen are proud that the family tradition is being carried on in Savage, where son David Fong Jr. operates D. Fong's, and Prior Lake, where daughter, Cindy Le, operates Fong's.

Three grandchildren work in the Lyndale restaurant when they can. Edward said his children, now in college, haven't decided whether they'll be the third generation at the restaurant. "They certainly have an open door to the business if they decide to," their father said.

Donna Halvorsen • 612-673-1709

©2005 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
http://www.startribune.com/462/story/156248.html