THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 26, 1997 TAG: 9701240209
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: RANDOM RAMBLES
SOURCE: TONY STEIN
LENGTH: 77 lines
Great Bridge, currently getting famous for too much traffic and too little green space, now has a much nicer distinction. The food critic for The Virginian-Pilot recently blessed Ho-Ho restaurant as having the best Chinese food in South Hampton Roads.
Take a bow, Robert and Richard Wong, the father and son who run the place. Or, better yet, instead of bowing, pass me a plate of your fine pork lo mein.
Ho-Ho has been in the heart of Great Bridge since 1980. ``Ho'' means good, says Robert, and ``Ho-Ho'' means very good. I guess the Santa Claus version, ``Ho, ho, Ho,'' means something absolutely wonderful. Like taking all the ab machines hawked on cable TV and dumping them in the river.
Robert's family is originally from Canton, China. His father came to America in 1910. Was he scared, I asked Robert. ``What do you think,'' Robert said. ``He spoke no English and he didn't know the culture.'' But he was seeking a better life for himself and for his family. It was traditional for the oldest son to establish himself and send for the others in the family.
He had come to San Francisco but moved to Norfolk in 1920. Eventually, he opened a noodle factory and that's where Robert started toting, fetching and carrying when he was 12 or 13. One of the chores was wrestling hefty blocks of ice for the ice box. There was at least one small compensation. In summer, the delivery man let you have some cooling chips to schlurp.
After he graduated from Maury High, Robert went back to China to learn more of the country's culture and written language. He smiles and says he gave up on written Chinese after a couple of years. ``It was,'' he says with the smile even wider, ``Greek to me.''
He had worked at a family restaurant before he went to China and worked in a restaurant at Norfolk's Wards Corner after he came back. Then, in 1980, he hung out the Ho-Ho sign. At 69, he's formally retired, but still spends a lot of time behind the counter and visiting with customers. His son, Richard, holds the title of president of the corporation. Ask him what his father's title is and he says ``He is the backbone.''
Richard, a former design engineer for the city of Chesapeake, is a Virginia Tech graduate. But he'll tell you that he learned the restaurant business in the school of hard knocks. And a tough school it can be. Richard started as a teen-age dishwasher. Robert, calculating the time it takes to get ready for the day, serve the customers and close up, said it can chew up 14 or 15 hours a day.
The other big challenge of running a restaurant is maintaining consistent quality, Robert says. ``You have to keep an eye on it,'' he says. He also keeps an eye on what might be new and trendy in Chinese cuisine when he and Richard go on food-scouting trips to Washington restaurants.
Richard says there's a trend toward spicier on the local Chinese food front. ``As the population of Chesapeake gets younger and more sophisticated, they seem to have an interest in the spicier dishes. The older folks still enjoy the more traditional chop suey and chow mein.''
The less-fiery type of Chinese cooking is Cantonese. Sechuan is the hotter stuff. For instance, the most popular Sechuan offering on the Ho-Ho menu. It's called Kung Pao chicken and chili peppers are in the mix.
I go for the milder stuff, but please make sure you give me a knife and fork, not chopsticks. The only way I could eat with chopsticks would be to eat the sticks themselves. Richard makes it sound easy, though. ``Hold them like a pencil,'' he says. ``Thumb and first two fingers and just pivot them.'' My response: HELP!!!
Then I wondered is there really something called bird nest soup. Indeed, said Richard. It is a substance based on material pappy bird sends out of his mouth to feed his young. Thanks, but I'll pass.
And ever since I read where someone won the lottery with numbers from a fortune cookie, I have been keen to crunch the little gadgets. If you were wondering, they put the fortunes inside while the cookies are still soft. Then they seal them and finish baking. I also read somewhere that there are fortune cookies with so-called adult messages, but Robert says he'll stick to the tried--and-true cheerful and comforting ones. Verbal teddy bears.
``That's what's nice about fortune cookies,'' Richard said. ``They're up-beat. They make you feel good.''
Then he talked for a moment about the family effort that has established the restaurant. ``Chinese is about family,'' he said. ``It's reflected in the restaurant and the work ethic our parents passed on to us. We're working hard and we're doing well.''