Cantonese restaurant is one of the city’s oldest
Ding Ho has been owned by the same family since 1956 opening
All the way back in 1956, Frank Yee, an immigrant from China, and Clifford Yee, who were not related, opened Cantonese restaurant Ding Ho in a converted gas station on West Broad Street on the city’s West Side.
Frank Yee took over the business solo, and later retired at 95. His son, Peter Yee, continued on the legacy, moving from Canada to take care of the family business in the late 1960s.
Steve Yee and his twin sister Lucy began taking over as their father got older, though the 88-year-old can still be found working at the restaurant a few hours a day.
Steve Yee remembers living a block from that original building on West Broad Street and walking into the restaurant to work or to see his aunts, uncles and grandfather, who passed in 1978.
Yee moved back to Columbus from Dallas in 2003, and helped Ding Ho move to its current location at 120 Phillipi Road in 2008, in a building the Yees own. The change was necessary, Yee said, as the restaurant was spending a lot of money keeping the building up to date and up to code. “It should be
our permanent spot for many more years,” he said.
What’s changed in six decades
Ding Ho has seen the restaurant industry change greatly. Yee said reliable employees, specifically immigrants who would come to work for them for 10 or 20 years, are a thing of the past. The work ethic of employees has changed, making it hard “just to get
people to come into work, to show up on time, to do their job,” he said. But Ding Ho has been able to hold on to its staff: The restaurant is on its fourth head cook in 66 years, and there are waitresses like Clara Stevens, who has worked at the restaurant since 1965.
Yee said the concept of a big restaurant with a full-scale dining room is also something you don’t see as much, with business now at 60% carryout, even pre-pandemic. 20 years ago, their business was just 20% carryout.
There have also been cultural changes. Over the years, Ding Ho has ditched white tablecloths and filet mignon for a more casual environment and menu. “Twenty years ago, 30 years ago, we had lobster tail, filet mignon. People change, and now you have General Tso’s chicken, sesame chicken,” said Yee. “Those dishes weren’t even invented 2025 years ago.”
Their menu is also less reliant on
American dishes intended for customers who dislike or are unfamiliar with Chinese food, though chicken tenders and a few basic dishes remain for picky eaters.
“When we first open up back in the mid-’50s, a lot of people never experienced Chinese food,” said Yee. “To this day, we still have customers come in that [say] they don’t care for Chinese food.”
Ding Ho has seen the West Side change as well. The area has transformed from the home of major manufacturing plants like General Motors’ Fisher Body plant, and draws like Westland Mall, to empty buildings and major losses, including the shuttering of the mall in 2012.
But Yee said the opening of Hollywood Casino Columbus has helped bring people more to the West Side again in the last decade. “Even our regular customers that don’t come as often, they might have moved away for some reason, come to the West Side and go to casino and come here afterwards,” he said.
Continuing a family legacy
Running a family business can have its challenges, said Yee, but there are positives. Their family is together, including fourth and fifth generations in Steve Yee’s nieces and their children, along with family members who stop in the restaurant to say hi.
Family businesses come and go, but a third generation of owners is rare. For Yee, he wanted to take on the family business because he grew up in it; he’s used to working the long hours and weekends required to run a restaurant.
The business might stop with him, he said, but he hopes one of his nieces or nephews is interested down the road. There is talk of other relatives opening a to-go version of the restaurant as well.
“I’m third generation, my son’s fourth generation. I don’t perceive him doing this job ... you’re talking about all your weekends are taken,” he said. “It’s consuming. But same time, it’s very rewarding to see customers [of ] multiple generations coming in ... saying the food tastes just the way [they] remember 20, 30, 40 years ago.”