Joe Lung’s family fed Austinites for three generations
The restaurateur and engaging storyteller died Wednesday at 77.
Joe Lung, whose family operated popular Austin eateries over the course of three generations, died of complications from a stroke at Hospice Austin’s Christopher House on Wednesday. He was 77.
From 1897 to 1990, the Lung family owned Austin restaurants, cafes and diners, including Lung’s Chinese Kitchen on Red River Street. Joe Lung sold off the last of the family sandwich shops, appropriately named Joe’s, in 1990.
In 1997, he, like his father before him, suffered a heart attack. So he slowed down. During his later years, his sunny smile and ready tales welcomed visitors to the Capitol Gift Shop in the Capitol Extension.
“At church, he greeted everybody at the door,” his wife, Diane Lung, said Thursday. “He’d arrive an hour early to make the coffee. He also loved going to his grandchildren’s activities — concerts, recitals, sports — loved every kind of family gathering.”
Joe Lung was a gentle, spellbinding storyteller, and some of his history was recorded in a 2014 profile in the American-Statesman.
His grandfather came to America in 1876 to help build the railroads; he was 12, and he and his brother moved to Austin in the 1880s after laying tracks northeast of the city. The family opened a grocery store on Congress Avenue; in 1897, they launched a cafe at the corner of East Sixth and San Jacinto streets.