In a pause between courses, Brenda brought out the old photos. There was a picture from 1974 of them as young newlyweds in Hong Kong, fresh from their wedding arranged by Woon's "auntie." The next day, he brought her to Philadelphia, where he had a job at the original Imperial Inn.
There was a picture of Brenda's mother, Yuk, lighting firecrackers in front of Lakeside on its first day, March 18, 1989.
"Very lucky number," said Brenda, referring to the date. "And look, no hole in the sign!"
Of course, Brenda refused to fix the sign for 10 years after a beer bottle from a bar fight across the street flew right through their facade. "Good luck," she said.
And indeed, this bare-bones little dining room was always filled with the joy of a dedicated crowd - most of them Chinatown locals - who came to eat some of the most carefully crafted food in town. No shortcuts. Even the hot oil dipping sauce made from three kinds of chiles was prepared in-house.
Woon trained more than his share of cooks in his years at Riverside, their first restaurant, and Lakeside. He proudly names Ong's, Lee How Fook, and Pho Xe Lua as places to encounter his proteges.
But I know as we sit down to this final course of crispy chiu chow rolls and downy white dumplings that I'll never quite taste these flavors again. I help him whip the shrimp and water-chestnut stuffings. I take a lesson rolling the delicate dumpling skins, carefully crimping the pleated seams in the crook of my thumb and forefinger.
"Seventy percent," he says critically of the final dumplings, clearly missing the comfort of his old restaurant haunt.
But they are, in fact, delicious. The rolls are snappy and crisp, with the little crunch of water chestnut inside. The dumplings are an ethereal translucent white, with perfectly scalloped edges harboring sweet meat and roasty nuts inside. I am positively beaming as we polish off the entire lunch.
Brenda pours another glass of yellow chrysanthemum tea, then walks over to the kitchen, where she tenderly massages Woon's shoulders and says: "Now you can retire."
