Tai Pan restaurant on Route 9 in Halfmoon has been sold and will close at the end of August after 35 years.
Jim Franco/Times Union
Since Tai Pan closed for dine-in service at the beginning of this year, its host stand has been the pickup spot for takeout orders.
Jim Franco/Times Union
A sunken seating area centers one dining room.
Jim Franco/Times Union
Tai Pan was a significant expansion of what had been a small Italian restaurant. The builder also built and owns the Chinese restaurant Plum Blossom in Brunswick.
Jim Franco/Times Union
HALFMOON — After 35 years of owning and running Tai Pan, a Chinese restaurant with an expansive menu that includes a few pan-Asian favorites, Danny and Bonita Lee are retiring. He’s 79, she’s four years younger, and they’re headed to Arizona to be near their two daughters and four grandchildren, ages 9 to 16. Originally announced as closing Aug. 15, the restaurant will continue to serve — on a takeout-only, advance-order basis — through Aug. 30. The business and distinctive wooden building have been sold (more on that later).
As Danny tells their story, he arrived in this country from their native Hong Kong in 1967, not yet 20 years old, and started working in restaurants on his third day in America. He was drafted to serve in Vietnam but was ultimately rejected. “I was 5 pounds underweight,” he said. Fast-forwarding a decade, he and Bonita opened Lee’s Restaurant in Delaware Plaza in Delmar, closing it in 1991 to open Tai Pan. (The name historically was used in reference to a foreign business leader operating in Hong Kong or China.)
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Regulations prohibited razing a small Italian restaurant that previously occupied 1519 Route 9 in Halfmoon, so they dramatically expanded it to the angular building that stands today, which exhibits Chinese, Japanese and Craftsman styles and has a handsome, light-filled interior, with soaring, trussed ceilings and a sunken central area in the dining room. It seems startling, frankly, plopped there alongside a Route 9 lousy with strip plazas, until you learn that the family member, and former business partner, who built it owns the truly ornate Plum Blossom in Brunswick.
Bonita started urging Danny to retire about a decade ago.
“I tell him, ‘It’s time,’” she said. “But we would miss the beautiful building, miss the really good customers.”
Said Danny, “We had people come when they’re 35, and they still come now when they’re 70. They tell us their problems, their happiness, bring their families.”
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Some started dining with the Lees in Delmar almost 50 years ago.
“A lot are gone or moved away,” said Danny. “Others (are) not young — old like me but still come.”
And so the Lees soldiered on, 364 days a year for 35 years, closed only on Thanksgiving.
But Danny’s upper back and neck kept getting worse. After 60 years over stoves and woks, his shoulders stoop and his neck, without its omnipresent cervical collar, drops his chin toward his chest. He said, “In the supermarket, I have to do this,” demonstrating how he tilts up his chin with one hand while guiding his cart with the other, to avoid crashes.
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He shrugged, adding, “The muscle is just like a spring — looser over time. That forced me to retire. I still want to work.”
Enter Billy Chow, a bank executive who’s been involved in a variety of ways with multiple local Asian restaurants over the years, including Boil Shack in Colonie, Jade Bistro in Scotia and Zen Asian Fusion in Schenectady. His mother is a longtime friend of the Lees.
“We’ve known him since he was a kid,” said Danny. “He helps people out with restaurant deals.”
Chow said the buyer of Tai Pan is Run Jing Wang, a native of China and classically trained chef who currently owns Golden Bird Chinese Restaurant, a takeout-focused storefront in a plaza near Schenectady County Airport on Route 50 in Glenville. Golden Bird will remain open.
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“They’ve done very well and were looking for a larger place, so I connected them” with the Lees, Chow said. He said the Tai Pan name will be changed to Zest Asian Bistro, with a broadly pan-Asian menu. Wang hopes to open Zest early next year after minor renovations including the addition of a sushi bar and outside seating.
Meanwhile, the Lees will be packing. They said they’ll miss winter — but not deep snow.
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During big storms, “We can’t even get in” the parking lot, Danny said. “We have to park on the road to shovel before we can get in.”
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“The customers,” said Bonita. “We do it for the customers.”
This column originated in the Table Hopping newsletter, delivered for free via email on Monday and Thursday afternoons. Subscribe at timesunion.com/newsletters/table-hopping.
