House of Lee’s Heyday

Warm Memories of the Restaurant and its Famed Wing Ding Room

Today, only its legend survives, but the House of Lee once gave this town some color and ethnic flavor, while its adjoining Wing Ding Room bar gave local celebrities a low-key gathering place to unwind.   Awash in velvet paintings and red vinyl booths, Ah Wing Young’s Chinese restaurant had character, and many actors made his bar their ‘House of Libations.’ James Arness, Richard Widmark and Anthony Quinn passed through the strung beads designating the Wing Ding Room a family-free forbidden zone. You could have called this joint the ‘House of Lee Marvin’ given the amount of time the ‘Dirty Dozen’ star spent there.   Palisades historian Randy Young (no relation) remembers spotting several other stars: Patrick McGoohan, Anthony Hopkins, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole, Richard ‘Paladin’ Boone, even Steve McQueen.   ’I always remember that the Wing Ding Room was separated from where the families were,’ Young said of the enigmatic area that became a ‘rite of passage’ once a Palisadian turned 21. ‘James Whitmore would stumble through the beads,’ and inebriated celebrities would slip out the back door, Young recalled.   Another famous face frequenting the Wing Ding was ‘Mission: Impossible’ star Peter Graves, a longtime Palisadian.   ’We always went with friends in the Palisades,’ his wife, Joan Graves, told the Palisadian-Post, including friends from the early Palisades Players theater group.   Inexpensive and far from chichi, House of Lee indulged in some old-school Chinese kitsch.   ’The food was so-so but it wasn’t white bread in an extremely white-bread community,’ Randy Young said. ‘It was exotic. The rumaki was pretty deadly, but the deep-fried shrimp was pretty darned good. The portions were large.’   Palisadians frequented the House of Lee because ‘they were always open,’ Graves said. ‘Ah Wing and [his wife] Kay were just delightful. We loved it. Quite often, we would go and take an order and bring it home.’   And while anyone who spent a tad too much time in the Wing Ding will probably not remember what they drank, everyone remembers the hamburgers.   ’After you finished, you had to go to the dry cleaners, because they’ve just dripped all over you,’ the Chamber of Commerce’s Arnie Wishnick told the Post in February 2000, the year the restaurant became what is now the Pearl Dragon.   The road to House of Lee began in turn-of-the-20th-century China. Born in 1907, Ah Wing Young came to America in 1922 from Canton, after his American-born father died young. Raised by his uncles in Philadelphia, Young entered the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II and married Kay, a California-bred Chinese-American he met in New York.   In 1947, the Youngs came to L.A.’s Chinatown district to start a new life together. Contractor Bob Wilson, an old friend from Kay’s school days, helped Ah Wing obtain Palisades land for his grand business plan.   House of Lee became the first business on the north side of Sunset Boulevard between Swarthmore and Monument. And when it opened in 1950, Young did it with a bang worthy of a Chinese New Year fireworks display. The town’s conservative Methodist contingent initially made a fuss over Young’s pursuit of a hard-liquor license. He won, landing the only such license in the business district.   In 1957, the Youngs moved into their residence at 857 Castiac Pl., where they raised their daughter. She went on to marry Lieutenant Alan Eggleston, a U.S. Navy pilot stationed at Barber’s Point in Hawaii, and had two children, Christopher and Kevin.   The Youngs were ‘a very important couple in the community,’ Randy Young said. ‘He was head of the Chamber of Commerce, and a major player with the American Legion.’   ’Ah Wing was the most genial host. His wife, Kay, was super. What a lovely lady,’ said Graves, who recalled that the latter worked with kids making costumes for dance recitals at the Ebsen School of Dance.   Ah Wing Young won Citizen of the Year honors in 1958 for his efforts to get the Legion building established on La Cruz Drive, and he promptly donated the $100 prize to the Palisades Youth House.   ’I am in love with this community, and I want to make the community a better place to live in for our children,’ Young said at the time.   In 1973, Young sold his restaurant to his cousin, Jimmy Fong.   ’I would see Ah Wing from time to time at Mort’s,’ Graves said. ‘He always remembered who everybody was. He was a dear, dear soul.’   Young passed away in 1994.   ’I’m going to take it easy,’ Fong told the Post in February 2000, after announcing that House of Lee was up for sale. ‘Twenty-six years is a long time.’ Alas, Fong died of cancer on April 21 that year.   House of Lee served its last Mai Tai on June 1, 2000, after which a group of investors, including lifelong Palisadian Tommy Stoilkovich, bought the establishment, converted it into Pearl Dragon restaurant (after a brief flirtation with the name Little Buddha). While it still echoes remnants of the original restaurant and bar, the new Pan-Asian enterprise bears only a faint echo of House of Lee, having been remodeled and redecorated into a more contemporary environ. In an April 13, 2000 Post article, Stoilkovich revealed that he wanted a ‘more upscale’ restaurant in the tradition of Nobu and Mr. Chow’s with ‘real Asian flair.’ And yet, by popular demand, House of Lee’s famous Wing Ding Burger survived the transition onto Pearl Dragon’s menu.   Today, Pearl Dragon continues to flourish, but like the Village Pantry to Mort’s Deli, the upscale destination stands in the shadow of its predecessor in the minds of many longtime Palisadians.   ’One time I was at House of Lee with Joan Graves and other members of the community council,’ Randy Young recalled. ‘And Mort of Mort’s Deli came to pick up Chinese food for his family. We kind of wondered why he wasn’t eating at his own restaurant. He said, ‘Hey! Where else can you buy a meal for twenty bucks?”