California politicians’ home away from home for 80 years

SACRAMENTO >> Fortunately for California, Frank Fat didn’t obey U.S. immigration laws. He sneaked in illegally and achieved the American dream.

We’ve all been better off for it. Couldn’t speak English. No green card. No money. Just forged papers with a fake name.

He arrived on a boat from China 100 years ago at age 16, seasick but determined to succeed. Did he ever.

Last week, a bunch of state Capitol old-timers — including ex-Gov. Jerry Brown, former San Francisco Mayor and Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and onetime Senate leader John Burton — packed the iconic Frank Fat’s restaurant to salute its 80th birthday.

Remarkably, Frank Fat’s is the only longtime major eating place around the Capitol still open. It closed in 1984 for a $1.2 million sprucing-up. When it reopened, 4,000 people came to celebrate.

Over the decades, other popular Capitol restaurants have shuttered: Bedell’s, Posey’s, Ellis’s, the Broiler, Chops and — just a few weeks ago — the Esquire Grill because of a stubborn quarrel about a new lease.

How has Fat’s managed to stay afloat? The Fat family owns the property. No lease problems.

But most important, it’s how the Fats have consistently run their flagship restaurant.

“You give people good food, a nice place to eat it in and make them happy. Pretty simple, really,” Frank Fat once explained.

Fat’s enjoys a hallowed place in Capitol lore because it’s the living symbol of a long-gone era of political cordiality and bipartisanship. Democrats and Republicans often worked together to pass important legislation. And frequently the deals were cut over drinks and dinner at Fat’s.

The most famous was the 1987 “napkin deal.”

Lobbyists for trial lawyers, insurers, doctors and tobacco convened at Fat’s one summer evening to negotiate the final chunk of a product-liability peace pact. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Bill Lockyer — later the Senate leader — scribbled the pact on a linen napkin and the lobbyists signed it.

A copy of the napkin is framed at Fat’s.

Fat’s was the legislators’ “home away from home,” Burton told the birthday party crowd, recalling the lawmakers’ thinking: “The food’s good, the food’s consistent and if you find a lobbyist, the price is right.”

Lobbyists were plentiful at Fat’s and they usually sprang for the legislators’ drinks and dinner.

That wining and dining by lobbyists made reformers wince. But these days, rather than pop for $30 meals, lobbyists routinely kick in $3,000 at legislators’ fundraisers. And nobody has much fun.

Frank Fat — real name Dong SaiFat — was born in 1904 in southern China. He decided to migrate, but the U.S. had the Chinese Exclusion Act. It barred any Chinese citizen who wasn’t traveling with an immediate relative who was a legal American resident.

So Fat’s grandfather paid a traveler $1,000 to pose as Frank’s dad.

Frank picked fruit, washed dishes, swept up, waited tables — in Sacramento, Detroit, Chicago — endured discrimination and even slept nights on the steps of a restaurant basement.

When he was a waiter at a Chinese restaurant in Sacramento, a state official asked him to place a keno bet. But the official left before learning that he’d won $900. Fat kept his winnings for him until he returned several weeks later. The official was so impressed, he arranged for a $2,000 loan so Fat could open his own Chinese restaurant in a rundown former speakeasy two blocks from the Capitol in 1939.

Frank died in 1997 and was replaced by popular eldest son Wing, who died in 2005.

Hopefully Frank Fat’s will never die.