FOR FANS, CHINA GARDEN FEELS LIKE FAMILY
It’s a midweek lunch hour and everyone who walks into China Garden on Leeland has to say hello to Carol Jue Churchill.
Seriously, she’s like a celebrity. At 53 years old, she is the youngest of four children and a spitfire talker with a Southern twang.
“I truly love good people,” she says. “I love getting to know people’s stories.”
It wasn’t always this way, which is hard to believe.
“When I was younger, I was really shy. In my mid-twenties, I challenged myself to meet as many people as I could and remember their names,” Churchill says.
Located just steps away from the front door of Toyota Center, China Garden is billed as the oldest Chinese restaurant in Houston. According to Churchill, the building began life as a paint store before giving way to lemon chicken and egg rolls.
Open since 1969, but located at its current spot since 1979, China Garden has fed generations of Houstonians a comfortable and homey brand of Cantonese. The restaurant began life as the Chinese Food Products Company to service the growing immigrant community, and soon it morphed into a sit-down eatery.
Churchill’s parents, David and Marian Jue, had long dreamed of showing Texans authentic Chinese food. David passed away in 2007 at the age of 73 from diabetes complications. He had first come to the United States in 1949 when he was just 17 years old and settled in San Francisco with his family. After his father died, the family moved to Shreveport, La., and he helped his uncle open up a Chinese restaurant in that city. In 1953, he opened the simply named Oriental Café with his sister and her husband in Bossier City.
In 1954, during a trip to Hong Kong, he met his wife Marian and they came back together to the U.S. By 1964, he had opened a second restaurant in Bossier City and a nightclub in Shreveport. He and wife Marian moved to Houston in 1968 with big dreams in a growing city.
“The old location was very small and quaint. It had 15 tables and a private room that would hold 30 people,” Churchill says.
The original building, at 1119 Jackson at Polk, is long gone. It was taken over by downtown convention center development. The Hilton Americas-Houston stands roughly where it was.
There is a copy of one of the original menus in the front of China Garden with 1970s prices. Some items, like beef steak au oyster sauce, have disappeared, along with $2.50 green pepper steak.
Loyal eaters made the move just a few blocks south in the late ’70s when the Jues sold their property for a then-princely sum of $100,000.
Over the years, Houston movers and shakers like lawyer Rusty Hardin, the late Bob Lanier and wife Elyse and broadcaster Jim Foley have made China Garden a dietary staple. It was worth a line in the gossip column in the Chronicle and the Houston Post if some well-heeled politician, business owner or lawyer was seen lunching there. Younger prominent Houstonians
like Harris County District Clerk Chris Daniel are continuing the tradition.
“I have a particular table I usually sit at,” Daniel says. “I highly recommend the off-menu specials. Crackling soup and pork dumplings are a few that many customers might be missing out on.”
Hardin, a legend in his own right, swears by the lemon chicken.
“I’ve had food from all over the world and there is nothing like what China Garden does,” Hardin says. A frequent guest at lunch time and after Rockets games, he’s been going to China Garden since he was a “baby prosecutor” and has known Churchill since she was 12.
“She is the common thread at that place. She’s the heart,” Hardin says. “She could teach a master’s class in business development.”
He just wishes that China Garden had windows. The building is notoriously without natural light. It’s a running gag between Hardin and Churchill.
“I can’t stand that they don’t have any windows,” he laughs. “Maybe if I ran a truck through it.”
There are other restaurants named China Garden in the Houston area, but they are not related. The name was long ago hijacked and since the Jues didn’t think to copyright it all those years ago, Churchill deals with angry Yelp reviewers confusing her restaurant with the pretenders.
Since Toyota Center opened nearby in 2003, it’s been a go-to spot for a pregame or preconcert meal or even after a game if the Rockets take care of business early. Directly facing the Toyota Center parking lot, it’s usually better to just wait out a postgame traffic jam over wonton soup and Chinese hush puppies with Carol and her crew.
Speaking of the Rockets, when Dwight Howard was still playing for Houston he was a China Garden regular, according to Churchill. Yao Ming and Jeremy Lin’s tenures with the Rockets were good for business to boot. Lin ate there with Chandler Parsons when they were both on the squad and Yao’s parents ducked in for dinner.
“We have acquired beautiful friendships and relationships,” Churchill says. “Our friends and patrons are like our extended family. I think the secret to being around so long is that our family truly cares about the people we feed.”