Kathy Fang's life and new food network show represent the forces of nature that make San Francisco's food and cultural scene stronger than ever.
We're proud to partner with Beyond the Fog Radio. For a special interview with Kathy Fang, please listen here.
Wardrobe throughout from Neiman Marcus, San Francisco, neimanmarcus.com; all jewelry from Cast Jewelry, castjewelry.com.
Some people, especially those who aren’t from traditional Chinese families, might think Kathy Fang’s relationship with her father is challenging. “If you look at me, you’d say I’m not super traditional, but there’s a certain way I approach the family dynamic,” says Fang, whose new Food Network show, Chef Dynasty: House of Fang, is a capstone to being crowned Chopped champion and running successful restaurants with her father, legendary chef Peter Fang.
This clash of generations, one rooted in traditional Chinese culture and another straddling American and Eastern influences, is at the core of Chef Dynasty. “I talk to my father every day. He has this parental sort of guidance that not only bleeds into my life, but also bleeds into my husband’s life. That’s in Chinese culture. You always respect what your elders have to say,” says Fang, who was born in the city’s Chinatown. “My husband, Caleb, is the total opposite. He looks Asian, but he’s super Western. He thinks it’s very unusual for a 40-year-old woman to need to tell her dad that she’s going somewhere for the weekend and needs approval. That makes no sense.”
The chef says the same notion applies to running the restaurants, Fang in SoMa and the legendary House of Nanking, where Chinatown, the Financial District and North Beach collide. “Since I partner with my dad, I always want him to be on board, and we talk about everything,” she says. “But my husband says, ‘Why? Just do it. Go against your dad.’”
Given the Fang family ties, this is both impractical and nearly impossible. “When it comes to Chinese culture, you can’t bulldoze your way through things,” says Fang, who also speaks fluent Mandarin. “You sometimes have to dance around difficult topics to find compromise in a nonaggressive manner. I’d like to think that I can do both. And my dad is my business partner,” says Fang, who opened her eponymous restaurant with her father in 2009. “I may end up doing things a little more slowly than some because of this relationship, but, you know, I’m a successful chef and restaurateur.”
To be sure, this is a daughter’s respect for tradition, but Fang also possesses a deep adoration for her father and mother, Lily, both of whom arrived in San Francisco in the early 1980s with less than $50. House of Nanking opened in 1988. Fang says her family didn’t want her to get into the restaurant business, so she graduated with a degree in business from USC and worked at Johnson & Johnson and Merrill Lynch before yielding to the familial allure of foodservice.
Peter is the front-man and creates the recipes at House of Nanking, but Lily is the quiet backbone of the business, says her daughter. “She’s so detail-oriented, including accounting and staffing, and House of Nanking wouldn’t be as successful as it is without her,” says Fang.
“In fact, Nanking happened because of my mom. My dad was working in real estate, and, at night, he would pick up extra money as a restaurant server and bartender. But my mom is the risk-taker, and she said to my dad, ‘I’m going to open this restaurant whether you want to do it or not.’ And then my dad, of course, being the control freak, started creating the menu and began cooking.” Fang’s father also constructed all of the restaurant’s tables and chairs, as well as crafted the space’s molding. He wanted the restaurant to be light, bright and different from traditional, darker spots in Chinatown.
When Fang was a little girl, she would regularly sleep at her parents’ restaurant. She also did everything from bussing tables to bringing drinks to customers. It’s also where she learned to engage with the public effortlessly, which has been a boon to her personal brand, both on and off camera. “I can remember being this young girl sitting at the restaurant counter and just talking to everyone. And, of course, we always ended up talking about food,” says Fang.
Kathy Fang and her father, Peter, in front of House of Nanking
This practice gave birth to what Fang describes as the foodie inside of her—perhaps a predictable path, especially since she usually was in the restaurant 12 hours a day. She remembers specific dishes, especially a salmon filet with black bean sauce and tomatoes. “This was the umami bomb. My father would pour the sauce onto the dish, and it would sizzle and smoke,” says Fang. “Everyone in the restaurant would smell it, and I would be excited every time it came out. Seeing all of these dishes come alive, plus the creative part that my dad injected into the food, was really cool for me. I was basically living a chef’s life.”
Working late is part of the restaurant life, of course, and House of Nanking was no different. And yet, after the dinner shift, Fang’s father would invite her to explore Chinatown and North Beach’s food scene with him. This was the late 1980s and early 1990s, when plenty of places in those neighborhoods stayed open late. “When most kids were home in bed, I was out eating amazing food and listening to great music with my dad,” says Fang. “Gold Mountain on Broadway used to have a lounge downstairs, where they served amazing pork chops over rice. People would sing and perform until the wee hours.”
Fang and her father’s late night also would include visits to the now-closed Calzone’s in North Beach, where she witnessed her first bar fight. No matter. The excellent pasta and pizza carried those evenings, and they served as building blocks to her love affair with the foodservice industry.
“These nights in Chinatown and North Beach—tasting and enjoying everything—were unforgettable,” she says. “As was shopping for produce for the restaurant in the Chinatown markets along Stockton—although I’d always get in trouble for sampling the seafood,” she says, laughing. Fang also dreamily recalls slipping behind the Great Star Theater on Jackson Street, where one of her relatives was a custodian. He’d open the back door, give Fang a can of soda (“the coolest thing!” she says) and usher her into the movie. “I would sit in the theater, feeling its sticky floors through my shoes, and usually have the place to myself. I’d watch Chinese movies and sometimes Western stuff ,” says Fang.
Fang has two kids now, both under the age of 5, and she would be the last person to think she’s a bit of a parental superhero. But she lives the before-sunrise- to-late-night hustle existence. She rallies them in the morning, preps their breakfast and gets them out the door to school and daycare. She then answers email and conducts meetings between 9:15 and 11:15, sneaks in a workout and heads to Fang for the lunch shift. Kid pickup is 3:30, and Fang makes sure to spend time with her children before heading back to the restaurant and working through dinner. A supportive husband helps.
“My dad used to always pick me up from school,” says Fang. “We would go out and eat, and he would simply listen and talk to me. And that made all the difference. These days, during the late stages of the dinner shift, my dad will come over from House of Nanking to Fang and simply tell me to go home to be with my family, even though there’s a lot left to do in a crowded restaurant. So, I’m usually able to get home by 8:30 or 9. Which is unheard of in this business. That’s my father’s gift to me.”
Another gift is one of legacy. “The other day, my dad said to me, ‘You know we’re going to be part of history, right? There’s going to be TV content that shows our family and what we did, so we won’t be forgotten.’ He also said our grandkids and their grandkids can see all of this one day and connect the dots back to us. It’s something that we would have never been able to dream about, but we did—and it all really happened.”
Naturally, cities and neighborhoods change, and San Francisco has seen its fair share. These days, it’s no secret that the town gets the occasional black eye in national media and in certain political quarters. This angers and saddens Fang. “What makes San Francisco so great is that it tries to preserve a lot of the city’s cultural and architectural history. We’re not a cookie-cutter town,” she says. “So, when I go shopping in Pacific Heights with my kids, I can still stop by places like the Mayflower Market. If spots like this disappeared, San Francisco would feel different.”
While family and the generational tug of war are the overarching plotlines of Chef Dynasty, a subplot is holding on to a sense of place. Fang says the city’s neighborhoods, along with their restaurants, shops and bakeries, are woven into her DNA and made her who she is. “There are so many little pockets of discovery you can explore in San Francisco,” she says. “I’m hoping that the show will highlight the beautiful aspects of the city—to the point where I hope people will be like, wow, we should go see it.”
Photography by: Tracy Easton
