Route 66: Amarillo, Texas

Part 4: Hong Kong Cafe

Hong Kong Restaurant

The Hong Kong Restaurant started advertising in the Amarillo Globe-Times in the summer of 1963.  Soon after, the restaurant appears in the newspaper’s reporting on the local Bowling league–the restaurant had a competitive team.  The restaurant was positioned to try to get tourist traffic as well as appeal to locals.  Like other restaurants represented in this exhibit, Christmas and Mother’s Day were marked by special dinner events.  In 1967, Mother’s day dinner, featuring a multi-course meal, was advertised as a $1.75 a person.  The restaurant is no longer advertised after 1976. 

Throughout its tenure, the restaurant continuously advertised to hire more help–cooks, waitstaff, buspersons–illustrating the difficulty of running a restaurant in an area with a small Chinese American population.  In a January 27, 1971 article in the Globe about Chinese New Year’s celebrations held in other cities,  Jew Y. Kwan, identified as the owner of the Hong Kong Restaurant, inadvertently revealed much about the challenges of living in the city.  To explain why there were no celebrations in Amarillo, he stated simply, “It is hard to have a holiday with only five or six families”.