Silk Hat, Portland
The Silk Hat was located at 5144 NE Union St (Now Martin Luther King St). It is unclear whether the O’Reilly Auto Parts store located at the address is the same structure. Before it became known and valued as a Chinese Restaurant, the Silk Hat was known as Oscar’s Silk Hat. Frank Choo, along with partners Henry Louie and, based on oral history, Benny Chin, made some savvy decisions when they took over the restaurant. The first was to retain the name and logo.
Frank Choo and Henry Louie pose in the Aquarium lounge of the Silk Hat Restaurant in an August 1955 photograph.
A Shenango Pottery version of the Silk Hat tablewares, dating to before 1948.
Oscar’s Silk Hat was the first to use the top hat logo that later graces the FS Louie wares for the restaurant. Based upon examples found pictured on the web, Oscar’s Silk Hat had their restaurant wares provided by the Shenango Pottery Company, with the wares bearing a mark that was used by the company in the 1930s-1948 (https://rwcn-idwiki-2.restaurantwarecollectors.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Shenango-China-Backstamps.pdf). This fits nicely with the 1948 acquisition date by Frank Choo. Frank Choo was born in California in1903 or 4, to Iye Choo and Ona Gimoin. His partner, Henry Louie (Henry Food Jue Louie) was born in Toishan, Guangdong, China. Louie came to the US with his parents first to Seattle, where his father, Sake Low Louie, ran a restaurant.
Presumably the Silk Hat restaurant was bought, as often was the case, equipped with kitchen furnishings. Louie provided identical wares for the restaurant as Shenengo had. The Silk Hat ceramics can be seen in the photo montages of wares included in the 1960 FS Louie catalog, so the owners were what I’ve been calling “early adopters” of FS Louie’s wares, becoming customers between 1954-1960. Nothing on the wares identifies the restaurant as serving Chinese food–no Asian origin designs or language. The restaurant used a thinner grade of ceramic than seen used in many of the restaurants, conveying a sense of luxury rather than of practicality. In addition to introducing Chinese American foods, the owners maintained a wide selection of “American” foods, as they were called–steaks, burgers, etc–on the menu to attract as wide a clientele as possible.
The owners also invested in the infrastructure of the business, keeping it up to date and evolving, sometimes taking advantage of mishaps to improve the space. For instance, the Sunday Oregonian of April 8, 1951, announced that the restaurant had been the site of a major explosion that terrified not only patrons, but the neighborhoods surrounding the restaurant. Not 30 minutes after a new carbon dioxide cylinder (presumably for use in carbonated beverages) was installed in the basement, it exploded. The explosion rocked the neighborhood as it blew a four by ten foot hole in the restaurant floor and propelled canister shrapnel into the ceiling. No one was hurt, but everyone was shaken, and the restaurant experienced an estimated $1000 in damages. When the Oregonian reviewed the restaurant again on August 21, 1955, it announced that the restaurant had expanded three times since Choo [also appears as “Chu”] had acquired it in 1947, with the upscale Aquarium Lounge, featuring tropical fish tanks and lush Chinese decor having been built in 1954. Presumably repairs after the explosion prompted one of the expansions.
Choo died in February, 1963, based upon a death announcement in the Sunday Oregonian (February 17, 1963). Upon his death, Henry Louie became the sole owner of the restaurant, and remained so until it closed around 1975. Louie was a large presence in Portland’s Chinese American business community. In addition to his association with Silk Hat, he also opened/and or owned at different times Lotus Gardens, New Cathay, Fong Chong, House of Louie, Four Seas in Corvallis and Hi Hat, perhaps his most famous restaurant, in Tigurd. Lotus Gardens, New Cathay and Hi Hat all used ceramics purchased from F.S. Louie.
Restaurant fires were not unknown in Portland, and Henry Louie’s businesses were affected by multiple such events. A fire struck the Silk Hat in 1965 (Oregon Daily Journal, Dec 31, 1965), reportedly caused by combustibles being kept too close to the range, caused $1000.00 of damage. Cooking at high temperatures with hot oils came with risks in Chinese American restaurants. Yet, it is also important to give a nod to the historical relationship between arson and racial violence in Chinese American neighborhoods.
A 1955 news story spoke to the success of the restaurant in appealing to many different consumers. The lounge was seen as sophisticated and featuring outstanding cocktails, yet teenagers could be seen congregating in the main restaurant enjoying “cokes and milkshakes”, while local homemakers were quoted as saying “I don’t know what we’d do without the Silk Hat, they deliver take out meals free of charge, and they're delicious. The children love Chinese food and so do our friends.”
A newspaper article shows how the local press could sensationalize crimes that took place in or near Chinese American restaurants.
Still, the restaurant juggled the same challenges that came with keeping late/early hours, and from surges in crime that affected parts of downtown Portland, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. A horrific crime was reported February 24, 1957 by the Sunday Oregonian. A sailor and his girlfriend had just picked up food from the Silk Hat at 2:30am and were sitting talking in the man’s car when a hooded man entered the back seat with a gun and ordered them to drive to a secluded area. He tied up the man and woman, robbed 15 dollars from the man and raped the woman in the back of the car before fleeing the scene, leaving the mask and ties behind. A reporter modelled the mask in a freakish example of crime cosplay. In 1961, a gang of youths reportedly attacked and robbed a ten year old boy who was waiting for his parents in their car in Silk Hat’s parking lot at midday. The boy was robbed of his watch (Oregonian August 25, 1961). More serious crimes followed. Two Oregon Liquor Control Agents found themselves attacked with a lug wrench in the Silk Hat parking lot after denying the man the opportunity to buy a drink for his underaged companion (Daily Oregon August 22, 1963). On March 2, 1971, the body of Paul Wesley Kennedy, shot to death, was found by his girlfriend in his car, parked across the street from Silk Hat, where the couple had just dined (Oregon Daily March 2, 1965). These and other incidents illustrate the challenges that restaurateurs faced keeping late hours.
The Silk Hat does not appear in city directories after 1975. Henry Louie’s flagship restaurant, the sprawling restaurant and entertainment venue, Hi Hat, in Tigurd, burned in 1968, and during the time it was being rebuilt, newspapers refer to the family keeping their staff employed at the Silk Hat.
