DEAN SENSUI / DSENSUI@STARBULLETIN.COM The kitchen of a private home in Nuuanu is turned into a television studio -- full of lights, cameras on tracks and crewmembers -- for the filming of the new PBS cooking show, "Double Happiness," with Leeann Chin and her daughter, Katie.

Dynasty

From her unlikely home base
of Minnesota, Leeann Chin has
built a Chinese food empire

Chinese can be everday affair

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By Betty Shimabukuro
betty@starbulletin.com

Leeann Chin is no whiner. Life assigned her a mountain to climb -- sending her to a new country where she didn't know a word of the language, to build a home with a man of high demand and low support. And she just tucked in and climbed.

"I grew up in an old-fashioned family. I was told, 'Just be a good wife, a good daughter-in-law,' and it would be fine," Chin says. "I tried to be good, but it wasn't good enough for my mother-in-law, not good enough for my husband. So I have to do something good enough for myself."

Over the years, good enough has turned out to be 52 restaurants doing $50 million in sales yearly.

Leeann Chin On TV: With Hawaii chef Roy Yamaguchi on "Hawaii Cooks," 7:30 p.m. next Wednesday on KHET/PBS. Her new show, "Double Happiness," premieres on PBS in September In print: "Everyday Chinese" (Clarkson Potter, 200) and "Betty Crocker's New Chinese Cookbook" (John Wiley & Sons, 1990)

Good enough for anyone.

She's built an ever-growing empire -- Leeann Chin Inc. -- a brand name that in the Midwest is synonymous with Chinese cuisine. It's not just restaurants, it's catering, cookbooks and television appearances.

In September, Chin and her daughter Katie will launch a PBS cooking show, "Double Happiness," which was filmed at a private home in Nuuanu, produced by Honolulu's First Daughter Mediaworks. But you can meet Chin a bit early: She's the guest chef on "Hawaii Cooks with Roy Yamaguchi" next Wednesday.

Before we get to current events, though, the back-story:

Leeann Chin grew up as Wai-Hing in Canton, where she learned to cook by following her family's chef around. At 17 came an arranged marriage in Hong Kong, to husband Tony. In 1956 the couple moved to Minneapolis to join Tony's sister.

The idea, she says, was opportunity, for the family and especially the children's education.

She ran a seamstress business from home while Tony worked. She learned English from customers, neighbors and her five kids.

"Because it was such a small Chinese community, we belonged to the Sons of Norway and the Jewish Community Center," daughter Katie says. "We were very confused. We ate lutefisk a lot."

DEAN SENSUI / DSENSUI@STARBULLETIN.COM Leeann, left, and Katie Chin garnish a dish of Tai, or red snapper, for a New Year's episode of their upcoming PBS series.

In Minnesota in the '50s, Chinese food was chow mein, fried rice and anything sweet and sour. It was difficult to find fresh ginger or even garlic.

So after tasting some of Chin's homemade dishes, her customers asked her to teach, and she began classes at the Jewish Community Center. This led to catering jobs.

"I didn't even drive," Chin recalls. "I have to take the bus to buy groceries." It was Minneapolis-cold, and a shopping trip involved many transfers, so she'd actually leave bags of food at bus stops, then go back to retrieve them. "Good thing I was young and didn't know any better."

In 1980 she opened Leeann Chinn, her first restaurant. "It's kind of like things moved on. No plan."

A combination of factors played into her decision: Her children, except Katie, were grown, she liked the idea of having a professional kitchen -- and there was Sean Connery.

The actor had been a guest at a party she'd catered, and offered to invest if she ever opened a restaurant. He remains a sort of silent partner. "He doesn't care about the business. He just wants to eat. But people still talk about how he owns the restaurant."

All her former students -- she estimates she taught 4,000 over 10 years -- were big supporters, and after a few years she had three restaurants, which she sold in 1985. But retirement didn't agree with her, so three years later she bought the business back.

Chin says she may never have ventured out of the house except that Tony -- who has since passed away -- was so demanding. The business, she says, "was a place to escape."

He didn't want her to open a restaurant, believing it to be a lower-class occupation. He wasn't the only one.

"At first I go to the bank and they look at me like, 'Are you crazy? You're Asian, you're 47 years old, you want to borrow money?' I had to go to five banks before I could get anybody to talk to me."

It was after obtaining support from the Small Business Administration that Chin was able to secure financing and launch her business.

Chin never saw the point in depending on someone else to provide. "Waiting for someone to give you pocket money -- I never knew how awful that could be. It only lasted a couple of years. I started making my own money."

In this country, she adds, "I see the opportunity. When I started making money, I see you have a wide-open future."

As Chin's business continue to thrive, she's entered a new phase.

Through cookbooks and television appearances she's trying to persuade the world that scratch Chinese cooking can fit into everyday life.

Katie, who had left the Midwest to work in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles, was her catalyst. "She took a look in my refrigerator," Katie recalls. "I had two things: champagne and yogurt. She said, 'This is all wrong.'"

Her mother hosted a few dinner parties for Katie's friends, teaching as she cooked. "They said, 'This is so much easier than I thought. You guys should do a book or a cooking show.'"

Mother and daughter are partners now, having opened Double Happiness Catering in Los Angeles and appeared together in a number of Food Network programs.

Their PBS series will focus on easy dishes for the home cook, with Katie representing the world at large, asking questions to clarify her mother's recipes.

Katie says she and her sisters and brother are awed by their mother's accomplishments, especially considering she was nearly 50 when she started her business. "We always grew up believing you could accomplish anything, but when she did that, it was really amazing."

Back home, though, things never change.

In the mid-'80s, 35 years after she left China, Chin returned, and she goes back often to visit her three brothers and a sister.

"The funny thing is, they still think it's my husband's business."

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