As Chinatown Expands, Can Old-School Cantonese Restaurants Survive?
Maggie Hennessy
January 28, 2025

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“How many chicken wings can you eat?” Henry Cai, head chef and owner of 3 Little Pigs, asked me on a recent frigid afternoon at the stalwart Bridgeport Chinese restaurant Grand Palace.
“Um, six?” I replied.
“No, not here you can’t.”
Moments later, four whole chicken wings the length of my forearm arrived, encased in an almost invisible cornstarch dredge that supercharged their crispy skin. I couldn’t recall eating a more succulent, perfectly seasoned wing than this one. But as our table slowly filled with Cai’s other Cantonese go-to’s – salt and pepper pork chops nestled amid fat slices of jalapeño; bone-in five spice duck enveloped in sticky, sugared-soy glaze and chopped into bite-size pieces – I quickly resolved to take the second wing home.
Our original plans to meet at a newer and buzzier Bridgeport Chinese joint, JM Seafood, had been scuttled when it turned out to be closed. Luckily, Cai, a Chinatown native who now lives in the South Loop, knows all the best spots – as in, “where the locals go.” Over lunch, we chatted about the expansion of Chinatown outward from its proverbial heart at Cermak Road and Wentworth Avenue and Cai’s own sense of urgency to bridge cultures and preserve his family’s heritage through growing his own business in Chicago and beyond.
“I feel like the growth hasn’t even been that substantial; there’s still not a lot of Chinese restaurants in Bridgeport,” Cai said. He noted that most of the openings outside Chinatown over the past decade-plus have been clustered near JM on South Halsted Street, where you’ll find spots like Four Seasons Dumplings, Northern Taste, Ed’s Potsticker House, and, a bit further north, Da Mao Jia, at 26th Street.
Last spring, Cai debuted 3LP’s first brick-and-mortar location in Bridgeport, too, inside the sunny corner storefront on 31st Street that formerly housed Pizza Fried Chicken Ice Cream. Cai’s magnetic, fast-casual food mixes Chinese American and Cantonese influences; think hotpot broth-dipped Italian beef sandwiches and fried rice loaded with BBQ pork, Spam, and Chinese sausage. Cai’s father, a Chinese-born chef, passed down his canon of traditional Cantonese recipes, which Cai reimagines through the lens of growing up in and around Chinatown as a child of immigrants. He started 3LP in 2020 by selling takeout via DMs on Instagram.
In fact, a direct line connects 3LP’s beloved salt and pepper chicken sandwich – comprising crunchy, battered chicken thighs seasoned with Cai’s own warmly spiced salt and pepper seasoning; sautéed jalapeño; fried garlic; and mayo on tender brioche bun – and Grand Palace’s toothsome salt and pepper pork, which we tore from the bone between bites of flash-fried jalapeño. McDonald’s claims a piece of this sandwich, too; Cai’s been infatuated with fast food since he was a kid.
“I could’ve followed my dad’s recipes straight up, but I wanted to do something different,” he said. He remembers feeling mesmerized by the McDonald’s he ate at in Hong Kong as a child. “They’d change their food so, like, they had fried rice and fried chicken, and I’m like, holy crap, what a genius idea. I told myself, man, I’d love to have restaurants like McDonald’s in China. And I just held onto it.”
Cai self-describes as old school Chinese American, since he grew up in a household with parents who don't speak English. When his parents moved from Guangzhou, China, to Chicago – via Hong Kong, Belgium, and Michigan – in the 1980s, Bridgeport and Chinatown were still heavily Italian neighborhoods.
His family didn’t eat out often, except on birthdays and occasionally at Christmas. When Cai started crossing the bridge from Chinatown to Bridgeport on his own to eat, it was usually to house a chicken parm sandwich and vinegary wings at Ricobene’s, grab a pizza at Phil’s, or enjoy an Italian ice at Fabulous Freddie’s Italian Eatery.
Over time, Grand Palace – like Chinatown’s Seven Treasures on Wentworth, which closed last year – became one of few threads connecting Cai to the culinary legacies of his parents’ generation. More second-generation kids are opting for the comfort and stability of 9-to-5, white-collar jobs rather than taking up ownership of the family business, Cai said.
We were maybe ten minutes into our meal at Grand Palace when Matt Chiu, another regular, strode in for lunch. Chiu is the second-generation co-owner, with sister Joyce Chiu and her husband William Chan, of Chinatown’s oldest bakery, Chiu Quon Bakery. Their parents, Pui Yip and Cora Chiu, opened Chiu Quon in 1986 using the pastry and bao recipes Pui Yip brought from Hong Kong, where he learned the trade.
“I’m gonna get the same exact thing!” Chiu said, after glancing briefly at our table. “Every time I come here, [the owner, who declined to be named] always tells me she’s going to retire. And I tell her, ‘You can’t retire. Where am I going to eat this food?’”
Chinatown has been an enclave for the city’s Chinese immigrant community since the early 1900s, when it was relocated from the South Loop. In recent decades, rising rents have prompted people from the neighborhood to move to more affordable adjacent places like Bronzeville, Pilsen, McKinley Park, and Bridgeport. While Bridgeport was historically a white working class neighborhood, Asians now represent the largest demographic in the neighborhood, hovering around 35 percent, according to reporting by City Bureau.
Ed’s Potsticker House, with its long, cigar-shaped pork dumplings and fiery Sichuan beef, quickly amassed a following among restaurant industry folk and food writers when it opened in the early part of the 2010s. A handful of years later, in 2017, Northern Taste and its pan-fried pork dumpling pie came to South Halsted. That same year, Da Mao Jia (A Place By Damao) opened in a strip mall at 26th Street to much fanfare with its tight menu of tender braised meats, handmade noodles, and bell dumplings soused in fiery chili oil. It resides in the same complex as Taipei Cafe, which started slinging Taiwanese street food, including its addictively craggy popcorn chicken, that same year, too.
It didn’t take long after JM Seafood (formerly Wing Yip) opened in its new Halsted location in 2023 for diners to flock in droves for Cantonese dishes like steamed lobster infused with ginger and scallions piled over sticky rice; pork belly stir-fried with peppers; and creamy, salted egg yolk fried pumpkin.
“It’s authentic,” said Cai, who likes JM Seafood’s spare ribs and plum wine-marinated duck. “I’ll eat it like once a month.”
Still, he worries about the survival of the traditional southern Chinese dishes like those at Grand Palace we kept picking at well past being full. Cai is about to open another dine-in location of 3LP in Avondale, which will include a full bar. His first location outside Chicago will open in Los Angeles in the next few weeks. He wants to add more traditional-ish Cantonese dishes to his menu, like soy sauce chicken, which nods to Grand Palace’s five-spice duck. The dish involves building a master stock, known as lo sui, using soy that’s sweetened with rock sugar and seasoned with a heap of spices. The stock is then repeatedly re-used to boil whole ducks, or in Cai’s case, chicken thighs – “Breast meat is too dry!”
“Just imagine thousands of pounds of chicken over the past decade cooking in that master stock, and you just keep adding to it, so it gets better with time,” said Cai. He inherited 3LP’s lo sui from his father. “That’s something I can leave to my kid.”
Of course, there’s no guarantee Henry Junior, now eight months old, will want to take up the heavy torch of keeping the lo sui alive, much less taking over 3LP from Cai, whenever that time comes.
“You never know,” he said. “Do our kids want a regular 9 to 5 or to take over the family business? Maybe my son wants to build a name for himself, like, ‘I don't wanna live in my dad’s shadow’ – which is understandable. I did, too.”
For now, Cai feels duty-bound to keep sharing 3LP’s food, not just to honor the sacrifices his parents made by leaving everything behind, but to ensure children of immigrants – who share his experience of straddling two cultures, of speaking different languages at home and school and maybe feeling like they don’t quite fit anywhere – feel seen.
“I want 3LP to not just be for Chinese Americans, but to represent all immigrant children that can't find a place. I want them to understand that we could still thrive. We don't have to belong to one thing. We can belong to multiple things.”
This story has been edited to reflect a quote change.