Kathy Fang, Part 1 (S8E10)

Kathy Fang was born in the Chinese Hospital in Chinatown in San Francisco.

In this episode, meet and get to know Kathy. These days, she's the co-owner (with her dad) and chef at Fang restaurant in South of Market. She's also joined her parents in running their restaurant, the legendary House of Nanking. But her story starts with Lily and Peter (her mom and dad).

We'll get to Lily and Peter's story, of course. But Kathy begins by talking about her unique position being born just up the hill from her parents' restaurant, and essentially growing up at House of Nanking. She sees herself as perfectly positioned not only to continue their story but also to share it widely. This podcast serves exactly that purpose.

Prior to emigrating from China, neither Lily nor Peter had any professional kitchen experience. They came to the United States having been educated and were looking for good jobs and a better life. But they landed and reality hit. They needed money. Besides a lack of funds, there was the language barrier. Getting jobs in Chinatown restaurants proved the path of least resistence.

Time spent behind the scenes in restaurants helped them learn English. Kathy describes her mom as the "risk-taker" of the pair. Lily started noticing that the folks who owned the places they worked in and ate at owned homes, had cars, sent their kids to private schools … that sort of thing. Opening a restuarant was her idea.

After convincing her husband to pivot away from his plan to become a realtor, Lily's dad (Kathy's grandfather) found the location on Kearny Street, almost at Columbus, that became House of Nanking. With no experience running a business, let alone a restaurant, the Fangs opened in 1988.

When they first welcomed diners, Peter was cooking traditional Shanghainese food, something fairly new to San Francisco at the time. Peter saw right away that they needed to make food for more than the 10 or so folks who knew their cuisine. He saw how incredible the locally grown and raised food in Northern California was, and soon sought to incorporate those ingredients into his dishes. One example was replacing the pork in a bun (bao) with fresh zucchinis and peas, to be accompanied by a side of peanut sauce. It was an instant hit.

If Lily is the risk-taker of the couple, Peter is the creative force. From a young age, in a family with four kids total, he was always interested in food. He read cookbooks and watched his mom closely while she made food. She was always one to put her own spin on things, and that carried through to her son many years later.

Though he obviously never fully pursued it, Peter did dabble in real estate. But between that and opening his restaurant, he had little time for administrative work. His young daughter, Kathy, started answering his calls when she was six. She repeated his requested message verbatim, doing her best to sound like an answering machine (remember those?). Kathy is pretty sure he never sold a single house.

Success for House of Nanking wasn't immediate. After some time, Peter realized he needed to pivot away from Shanghainese food. But they needed some luck, too. And they got it when Peter Kaufman, the son of moviemaker Phillip Kaufman, showed up outside the restaurant with the daughter of famed Chinese actress Bai Yang, who lived in Shanghai. The daughter insisted that they try the restaurant because it smelled "like home." Peter Kaufman loved the food Peter Fang had made him so much that he told his dad, who soon came back with food critic Patty Unterman. Unterman's review of House of Nanking appeared in the Sunday paper—the Bible for folks in the days before the internet.

That review appeared next to a column about a little place called French Laundry. Both restaurants got three stars—but their affordability dollar signs were dramatically different. The next day of service at House of Nanking saw the first of its now trademark long lines to get in.

We turn at this point in the conversation to talk about Kathy and her life. From her earliest memories, she recalls just being in her parents' restaurant all the time. It was an exciting time in San Francisco—the late Eighties/early Nineties. Broadway and its liveliness were basically next door. Life was colorful for young Kathy.

She knew her life was atypical. "Sometimes I wish I could (be like the other kids and) go to sleep at a decent time," she says looking back. She sometimes slept in the restaurant. But she also go to eat at North Beach restaurants with her parents after they closed up their own eatery for the night. I ask Kathy to name drop names of places they went—New City (the best Alfredo) and Basta Pasta (veal piccata) stand out.

Kathy didn't do quote-unquote normal kid things until middle school. Up to that point, it was all restaurant, all the time. One notable exception was seeing Chinese movies at the Great Star Theater, another thing kids didn't normally do.

At my prompting, Kathy rattles off the San Francisco schools she went to. It starts with Jefferson Elementary. Then she went to Convent of the Sacred Heart for middle school and high school. Around the time she started middle school, as noted earlier, her life changed. She spent less and less time at the restaurant and more time doing homework. She saw her parents much less in this era, too. But she did get to see her dad when he'd pick her up from school. They'd almost always go eat in Chinatown after that. Those meals formed the foundation of a strong father-daughter relationship for Kathy and Peter.

We end Part 1 with Kathy sharing all the sports she played throughout her school days. In varsity volleyball, playing back row, she had a "killer serve that no one could return."

Check back Thursday for Part 2 with Kathy Fang.

We recorded this episode at House of Nanking in Chinatown in December 2025.

Photography by Dan Hernandez