The Curtain Rises on a Carson Family Restaurant
by Jon Christensen
When a restaurant opens its doors it is like a curtain going up on a play. The actors are all in their place. There is no more time for rehearsals. The point is to act.
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by Kit Miller |
But before the curtain rises, the questions run through their minds: How will the audience react? Will their run continue?
A restaurant, like a play, needs a good response or it will die.
Inside the Carson Depot, the tension mounted slowly as opening time, 11:30 a.m., approached. In the kitchen, Debbie Wong quietly orchestrated the preparations for another day, like a backstage manager.
All of the elements came into play. Fire erupted from flamethrower-like industrial burners on the stove. Water boiled constantly on a backburner for cleaning the hot woks. Cold air rushed in from outside through a vent in the ceiling. And fresh food from the good earth was laid out for the day.
While Debbie's father stirred fried rice in a big 3-foot-wide wok, her mother set out ingredients in neat compartments: cashews, carrots, onions, pineapple, green pepper, bean sprouts, celery, broccoli. Debbie carefully poured egg into a delicate corn soup.
"It's hard to tell," she said, thinking about what the day ahead might bring.
"One day up and one day down. A slow day feels so long. I like busy. When it's busy you have more energy and can do all the things."
From his position at the bar, Debbie's husband, Henry, watched her with admiration. In China just the men cook. "But she can do it all," he said, cooking, waitressing, cashiering, even bartending in a pinch.
Henry met Debbie in a restaurant in Hong Kong in 1981. She had grown up in a big city near Canton, then moved to Hong Kong as a teenager. He had just graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. He was on vacation, he said, "just having fun blowing off steam."
She was a cashier. He asked her out. She showed him the town. They loved Hong Kong. Talk about a 24-hour town. Shops and restaurants were open up and down the streets even at two or three in the morning.
Henry spoke hardly any Cantonese. Debbie spoke no English.
"But we were able to communicate," Henry said. "If you can't speak each other's language, but you can communicate, you've got something really great."
Henry went back to the Bay area to work. But he missed her. After three months, he went back to Hong Kong. They got married, moved to San Francisco, and within a few years had two daughters.
While Debbie worked two jobs in the garment industry, Henry learned the secrets of finance, taking part-time jobs in insurance, mortgage banking, and financial planning. He studied the stock market.
Henry's family, Chinese immigrants themselves, had made some money in San Francisco real estate. Henry managed the family's real estate and investment portfolio. He also gave advice to others. Occasionally, Debbie helped translate for his Chinese customers. They liked working together. But as their kids grew up, they worried about raising two teenage daughters in the city.
A few years ago, they were on vacation in a condominium at the top of Kingsbury Grade. They looked down on Carson Country and decided to start looking for a business here.
Debbie knew she wanted to open a restaurant. She comes from a family of cooks and chefs. Her dad worked in restaurants in Hong Kong, New Orleans and the Bay Area.
A year and a half ago, they leased the Carson Depot, a former brewery and sports bar on East Telegraph Street, with an option to buy, which they expect to exercise soon. Then their parents came to work for them. Debbie's mother and father help in the kitchen. Henry's mother is the waitress.
Now, Debbie and Henry are both 41, in business together, and living with their parents and kids in a big house by the golf course at Silver Oak. They have had to adjust to life in Carson City, which is a lot "more relaxed," Debbie said, than San Francisco, Hong Kong, or Canton.
This day, like so many others, started slowly at the Carson Depot. A woman came in around 11:45 and sat down alone for lunch.
The play was on. Soon after that two guys in suits and ties came in to watch the NCAA basketball tournament and have lunch at the bar. One of them checked his pager and asked Henry if he could use the phone. Three guys in construction clothes sat down at a table in the dining room where they could watch the stock ticker on CNN.
Then all of a sudden it got busy and the small dining room was full of people and the pleasant buzzing of a dozen different conversations.
A few regulars came in, like John Alfaro, who meets his family here for lunch once a week, and state archivist Guy Rocha, who has an office nearby in the state library. "I can call ahead to get a good quick lunch, and it's ready on the table," he said, as he dug into curry chicken with steamed rice.
Debbie was at the stove with a wok in each hand. She kicked the gas control with a foot. Flames shot out. "The secret is high heat," she said. "Cook fast."
No motion was wasted in the kitchen. Only a few words were exchanged in Cantonese between Debbie and her father and mother. They know their parts by heart.
Debbie flash cooked tender morsels of pork, then poured out the grease before adding garlic, onions, and hot peppers. A spicy aroma filled the kitchen. "I like to cook healthy," she explained, with less oil, salt and MSG.
The finished meal was arranged on a plate, then slipped across the window counter to Henry's mother, who ladled on steaming rice and delivered it to a hungry customer.
After the meals were on the tables, Debbie circulated around the room. If people don't eat what is on their plates, she'll ask why. "Next time you tell me the vegetable you don't like," she said. "I don't like to cook something you don't like. You pay. I want you to enjoy it."
Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt was at a round table in the center of the room celebrating her birthday with her husband and staff. Her family runs an Italian restaurant, she said, so she feels at home here. "The food is nice and fresh," she said. "Everything is made to order. And the whole family is working together."
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Photo by Kit Miller |
Mid-afternoon, after the last customer left, Debbie picked the kids up at school and brought them to the restaurant. Sabrina, 16, goes to Carson High, and Beverly, 14, is at Carson Middle School. Then they all sat down together to eat their own lunch.
"It's unusual here in the United States," said Henry. "Families tend to break apart here. But Asian families try to stick together. We like to do business as a family project, whether it's investment, real estate, or a business. It spreads the risk. And the business flourishes faster when everybody is working together."
After lunch, there is a little time to relax. Once a week, Debbie studies English with a volunteer tutor. In San Francisco, she could get through most days speaking Cantonese and Mandarin. Her goal now is to read books in English.
"When I retire, I'd like to read a whole closet of books," she said.
Henry logged on to the Internet to check the stock market after it closed in New York. He still travels frequently to San Francisco on business. But once the restaurant is running steadily, Henry plans to move more of his business to Carson City.
"I like it here," he said. "I probably will divest myself of some assets in California and move them over here. I think the potential here is very great. We're probably in the middle of a growth curve here in Carson City. There's plenty of land and opportunity for more business, more people, more opportunity. "
Sabrina and Beverly have adjusted to Carson City, after a period when they racked up big phone bills calling friends in San Francisco. Now they have friends here.
"And since we came to Nevada, my sister and I got really close," said Sabrina. "And my Chinese is a lot better since I've been living with my grandparents."
The family was surprised to discover that their restaurant is not far from the historic location of Carson City's once thriving Chinatown on East Third Street. Their only disappointment has been that there are not more Asians living here now.
At the turn of the century, Carson City had 5,000 residents and 800 of them, or 16 percent, were Chinese. Now, a hundred years later, Carson City has grown to 10 times that size but there are fewer Asians, only around 700 of 50,000 residents, slightly more than 1 percent.
"I guess we're the new wave," said Henry with a grin.
But it is not always easy being part of a new wave. Only a dozen people showed up for dinner on this night.
Henry talked stocks with one couple while tending bar. As the night wore on, Jeopardy and the Wheel of Fortune replaced sports and the financial news on the overhead TV screens.
After the last customers left the dining room, Debbie came to talk with Henry at the bar. "Just need some time, right?" she said.
"Probably," said Henry.
"I don't understand Carson City," said Debbie. "San Francisco is more stable than here. If the food is good, the restaurant is always packed."
"It'll take at least two to three years to build up a clientele," said Henry.
"You have to be around so everyone can try you. Once they try you, they'll come back. A lot of people still don't know we're a Chinese restaurant."
In the sports bar, old photographs of Larry Bird, Muhammad Ali, and Joe DiMaggio stared down at them. "We're a good team, right Henry?" said Debbie.
Henry laughed and smiled at her.
It was 9 p.m. Time to close. They locked the doors and went into the dining room to eat dinner with their family. There they were surrounded by Chinese touches, art on the walls, an inlaid screen by the door, and good luck banners over the kitchen counter.
"Because a restaurant needs good luck," said Debbie. "You need to believe in good luck."