Peter Fang, the restaurant\u2019s legendary patriarch, and his wife did not build House of Nanking so their daughter could inherit it, Kathy Fang told Fortune<\/em> in a recent interview. To them, cooking was a necessity born of survival, not a career choice for the educated. \u201cFor my parents being very traditional, they also didn\u2019t want me to do it,\u201d she explained. \u201cIn fact, we have a saying that, you know, if you don\u2019t cut it in school, you can always go be a cook because it\u2019s considered manual labor. You don\u2019t need to have a proper education to go work in a kitchen.\u201d<\/p>\n Her parents don\u2019t know about \u201cfoodie\u201d culture, she explained, and don\u2019t even know how famous they\u2019ve become. Speaking to Fortune<\/em> as she releases the first-ever cookbook dedicated to her family\u2019s restaurant, she said even that was a struggle.<\/p>\n \u201cIt took me decades,\u201d she said about convincing her father to go along with it. \u201cHe thought that if he shared his recipes, people would just make it at home and not come to the restaurant anymore.\u201d He didn\u2019t understand his restaurant is a San Francisco institution, frequented by the likes of Francis Ford Coppola and Keanu Reeves, celebrities that her father wouldn\u2019t\u2014and didn\u2019t\u2014recognize anyway.<\/p>\n Michael Robinson Chavez\/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n Fang, who recently turned 40, shared Reeves was her favorite actor since high school, and the first time he visited her family\u2019s restaurant, she begged her father not to make him wait in the queue stretching around the block, as it does every night. His response was that \u201ceverybody waits in line,\u201d until she promised to get straight A\u2019s, and he relented. What happened next summed everything up. <\/p>\n \u201c[My dad] walks up to him and says something to him. Then looks at me and goes, \u2018Kathy, come over, take a picture with him. It\u2019s Sean Connery.\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh, my God. My dad doesn\u2019t know anybody, but he\u2019s heard of Sean Connery.\u201d Reeves, who is famously polite and good-hearted, told the Fangs that he was \u201creally flattered.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe took a picture that day and that picture sits on the wall at the restaurant,\u201d Fang said, happily. \u201cBut the story is that nobody there knows any of the famous people who go in.\u201d As a born and raised Californian, she would know all the celebrities, she added, but she\u2019s always busy, running her own restaurant, Fang, in the SoMa business district, which is about a 20-minute walk away. Fang and Reeves recreated the photo 29 years later, as shown by the House of Nanking\u2019s Instagram. <\/p>\n \n<\/p>\n Kathy Fang is a busy businesswoman. Besides running her Fang restaurant and releasing a cookbook, she is a\u00a0Food Network star as a two-time Chopped<\/em> champion and a cast member of\u00a0\u201cChef Dynasty: House of Fang.\u201d San Francisco Magazine<\/em> even crowned her as a \u201cculinary queen,\u201d and she\u2019s the mother of two children with her husband who, she notes, doesn\u2019t even like Chinese food. She talked to Fortune<\/em> about how she disappointed her parents by failing to become a doctor or lawyer\u2014and finally found out how proud they were of her through her reality TV side hustle.<\/p>\n Like many immigrants to the U.S. (the Fangs moved to San Francisco from the Shanghai area), the Fangs pushed Kathy toward a stable, prestigious future. <\/p>\n \u201cThey wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer [or] go into the corporate world,\u201d she said. She dutifully followed this path to the University of Southern California as a pre-med student, only to discover that, while she had no fear of cooking oil in a giant wok, she had no stomach for medicine. <\/p>\n \u201cI realized I was terrified of needles, like irked by hospitals,\u201d she said. \u201cThat would be a problem. Yeah, I still to this day cannot see a needle go into an arm.\u201d<\/p>\n She subsequently landed in the corporate world, working at Fortune 100 company Johnson & Johnson and Wall Street stalwart Merrill Lynch. But the corporate environment left her feeling uninspired. When she finally called her father to announce she was quitting her job to return to the family restaurant, he was befuddled and upset. \u201cHe\u2019s like, \u2018Why, did you get fired or something?’\u201d Kathy recalled, and she responded: \u201cNo, I just really don\u2019t like what I\u2019m doing and I love food, I love cooking and I like miss that kind of environment.\u201d<\/p>\n The environment she missed is one of organized chaos and high-pressure efficiency. While she declined to disclose financials, and acknowledged Fang had struggled more during the pandemic (as many restaurants did), she acknowledged her family\u2019s restaurant is a \u201ccash cow\u201d that has served an estimated 5 million to 6 million people over its 38 years in business, quite a feat considering the tiny footprint.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s tough when you think about how big the restaurant was when they first got started,\u201d she said, noting it could only seat 30 to 40 people for its first decade in business. \u201cAnd the kitchen can only fit about two to three people.\u201d It\u2019s since doubled the size of its dining room, but \u201cthe kitchen hasn\u2019t changed at all. It\u2019s just kind of wild.\u201d<\/p>\n Kathy\u2019s return marked a turning point for the brand. While Peter Fang had built the restaurant\u2019s reputation through culinary ingenuity, the family was media-shy, unlike their telegenic, media-savvy daughter. She said she was approached to try food television, and she sees it as something that allowed her to share her family\u2019s story. <\/p>\n \u201cI felt like I was kind of helping build this brand that my parents already built,\u201d she said. \u201cEverybody knows House of Nanking, but they\u2019d never done anything with it. They\u2019d never done any marketing, never done any PR around it.\u201d<\/p>\n Her involvement proved to her father the business could be multigenerational, easing his fears the restaurant would die when he could no longer work. <\/p>\n \u201cMy dad now knows that this is something that can continue down generations,\u201d Kathy notes, adding he even looks at his 8-year-old granddaughter as a potential future successor.<\/p>\n Fang said strangers and customers at the restaurant have come up to her and said, \u201cyour dad\u2019s so proud of you,\u201d and about three years ago, she recalled, during filming for the Chef Dynasty<\/em> show, her dad said during a green-room recap interview, \u201cI\u2019m just very proud.\u201d But she\u2019s never heard it directly from him. \u201cMy dad will never tell me, and that\u2019s a very Chinese thing, they just, they\u2019ll never compliment you to your face.\u201d<\/p>\n The restaurateur shared that one of her big jobs now is managing her parents\u2019 workload. Now in their mid-70s, they still both work the lunch and dinner shifts every single day. The thing is, Fang noted, the 18-month hiatus during the pandemic revealed that retirement might not be an option; during the lockdown, Kathy\u2019s mother, restaurant co-founder Lily, developed health issues from no longer being on her feet all day, and her father actually went totally silent.<\/p>\n \u201cMy dad lost his voice because he was using it every day that the vocal cords became weak,\u201d Kathy said. \u201cIt\u2019s like wild\u2026 As soon as he got back to work and started using his voice again, it came back.\u201d <\/p>\n She said there\u2019s no plan for them to slow down anytime soon. \u201cThey like the routine. Staying at home is not good for them. They also, because they work every day, have never developed any hobbies or made any friends,\u201d she said with a laugh.<\/p>\n There aren\u2019t plans to further expand, either. Kathy said she respects her father\u2019s wish to keep the business small and Chinatown-bound, waving off talk of any kind of nationwide expansion. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not going to do it if my dad doesn\u2019t want to,\u201d she said. \u201cIt would kind of lose that essence and soul to it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/GettyImages-564066193.jpg?format=webp&w=1440&q=100\"\/)
<\/div>A calling to a crowded kitchen<\/h2>\n
A business career to be proud of<\/h2>\n
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