Business
The last days of California's oldest Chinese restaurant: From anonymity to history
The conundrum facing the Fong family of Woodland arose earlier this year, shortly after a UC Davis law professor grew interested in a sign posted above the counter that read: “The Chicago Cafe since 1903.”
The Fongs had never given that sign much thought, beyond taking pride in running a family business with a cherished history in the community.
Not Paul Fong, 76, who has worked at the restaurant with his wife, Nancy, 67, since emigrating from Hong Kong in 1973.
Amy Fong has spent plenty of time at the Chicago Cafe in Woodland, Calif. Growing up, she headed to her parents’ restaurant every day after school to do homework and help with chores.
(Carl Costas / For The Times)
And not his children, Amy Fong, 47, a physical therapist, and Andy Fong, 45, a software quality engineer at Apple. They grew up sweeping floors and doing homework in the restaurant after school, but had gone off to college (UC Berkeley for Amy; San Jose State for Andy) under strict orders from their parents to find good careers, far from the grind of restaurant work. Now, with children of their own, they were looking forward to their parents’ retirement; they wanted their parents to be able to relax and spend time with their grandchildren.
Then, one day in 2022, Gabriel “Jack” Chin, a law professor at UC Davis, stopped in for lunch. Chin is an expert in immigration law, specifically the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that made it incredibly difficult for Chinese people to immigrate to the U.S. And he knew something the Fongs didn’t, something that would complicate the family’s efforts to wind the business down: If the sign behind the counter was accurate, if the Chicago Cafe truly had been operating since 1903, that would make it a treasure of historic significance.
In January, UC Davis announced the results of Chin’s research: Of the tens of thousands of Chinese restaurants serving food in America, the Fongs’ unsung little diner is the oldest one continuously operating in California, and probably in the U.S. The Fongs suddenly found themselves in possession of an important piece of American history, which had been sitting in plain sight in a farm town 20 miles northwest of Sacramento.
The media rushed to cover the story, and hordes of new customers followed. The Woodland City Council issued a proclamation, which included testimonials from council members about their favorite dishes. And instead of retiring, Paul and Nancy were working twice as hard.
On a recent Friday, their daughter, Amy, came by the restaurant with her two children and took in the scene, in its usual state of friendly chaos. Customers occupied almost every table and banquette, many chowing down the restaurant’s signature chop suey — which, like a lot of food served at the Chicago Cafe, is a Chinese American dish unfamiliar in China itself.
Amy Fong’s daughter, Kira Kranz, entertains herself during a visit to her grandparents’ restaurant.
(Carl Costas / For The Times)
The lone waitress, Dianna Oldstad, has worked with the Fongs for decades. She bustled to and fro, greeting regulars with gruff warmth. In the kitchen, Paul and Nancy raced from cutting board to grill with plates of meat and vegetables, and handed the finished dishes off with dizzying speed. Watching over it all were mounted deer and elk and a giant stuffed peacock with its tail unfurled in blue-green glory — gifts from customers over the years.
Paul’s pride in serving his diners, many of whom have become friends and fishing buddies, was evident. Still, his daughter noted with dismay: “They’re getting too old to do this every day.”
The family’s dilemma was so apparent that longtime customers chatted about it as they waited for their food: Would the Chicago Cafe simply end when Paul and Nancy retired? And how could its historic import have emerged just as the Fongs were finally ready to step back?
It is more complicated than one might guess to unearth the history of a Chinese restaurant that has been a fixture in a town for more than 100 years.
In part, that is because of the racism of the early 20th century: Local directories excluded Asian people and businesses until the 1930s, according to Chin. So records of the business had to be found elsewhere.
The Chinese Exclusion Act added another wrinkle. The law sought to prohibit immigration, but didn’t completely stop it. Instead, many Chinese people purchased the identity of Chinese Americans born in the U.S., and then posed as their relatives. The immigrants who came using fake identities were known as “paper sons.”
For a time, restaurants had their own exception to the Chinese Exclusion Act — which some coined “the lo mein loophole” — that allowed business owners to go to China on merchant visas to bring back employees. In the years after 1915, when a federal court added restaurants to the list of businesses allowed such visas, the number of Chinese restaurants in America exploded.
Dianna Olstad, the sole waitress at the Chicago Cafe, has worked with the Fongs for decades.
(Carl Costas / For The Times)
Paul Fong’s grandfather almost certainly came before the “lo mein loophole” went into effect. He came as a paper son, steaming into San Francisco Bay under the name Harry Young. The exact year is lost to history: The 1906 earthquake in San Francisco set off a fire that burned up reams of naturalization records — and also allowed many people to add extra “relatives” to the rolls when the records were reconstructed.
“Harry Young” made his way to Woodland, which had developed a busy Chinatown populated by immigrants who had come to work on the transcontinental railroad. At the time, many of Woodland’s neighborhoods were graced by stately Victorians, laid out on large lots shaded by towering oaks. Its Chinatown was a lot less grand: a collection of wood and brick structures built along Dead Cat Alley behind Main Street.
Paul Fong chops food in the solitude of his kitchen at the Chicago Cafe.
(Carl Costas / For The Times)
Paul Fong doesn’t know much about how his family came to have a restaurant, and why on earth they called it the Chicago Cafe. He was born in the Taishan area of Guangdong province long after his grandfather had left, and they never met. When Paul was still young, his own father left Taishan to join his grandfather in Woodland; he, too, came as a paper son, under the name Yee Chong Pang.
In 1973, Paul and his mother joined his father at the restaurant, along with Nancy. They would have come earlier, but because his father and grandfather had come as paper sons, there was bureaucracy to cut through even after passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, which finally opened the doors to immigration from Asia.
Paul came to Woodland from Hong Kong, a mega-city that even in 1973 had a population that topped 4 million. Woodland was home to just 20,000. It was a shock.
“In Hong Kong, so many people,” he recalled. The streets were bustling, the nightlife vibrant. The liveliest thing about nightlife in Woodland were the stars: The lack of city lights meant the stars sparkled more brightly.
But Paul grew to love it. Though he spoke limited English, he made friends. Amy recalled that bags of freshly shot duck and truckloads of zucchini would be dropped off periodically at the restaurant door. When a family friend accidentally ran over a peacock, it also wound up at the restaurant — mounted on the wall, not on a plate.
Jerry Shaw has been a regular at the Chicago Cafe for more than four decades.
(Carl Costas / For The Times)
Andy said his parents shared little over the years about how the family wound up in Woodland. He recalled going to visit the Woodland cemetery as a child to pay respects to his grandfather and being startled that the etching on the gravestone said “Young” instead of “Fong.” It was the first he’d heard of paper sons.
The Fong children went to the restaurant every afternoon after school. Looking back on their childhood, they could appreciate it was a local institution. Generations of families from all walks of Woodland life came for lunch and special events. At a recent City Council meeting, almost every council member had a personal story, some dating back decades.
“My family grew up eating at the Chicago Cafe,” said Mayor Tania Garcia-Cadena. Councilwoman Vicky Fernandez recalled that her family did too. “Your doors have always been open to all of us,” she said, adding that because her family was Mexican American, that had not always been true of all the restaurants in town.
Nancy Fong gathers ingredients during a crowded lunch service at the Chicago Cafe.
(Carl Costas / For The Times)
Still, as proud as they were of their legacy, Paul and Nancy were always clear on one point: Their kids would not be joining the family business. “My dad explicitly told us that he wanted us to go to college. Not do what he was doing, working so hard,” Andy recalled.
When the time came for the couple to retire, the Fong family planned to get out of the restaurant business.
Ten miles down the road, in his office at King Hall on the UC Davis campus, Chin kept thinking about that sign above the counter that said “since 1903.”
Chin grew up in Connecticut and does not speak Chinese. But he was interested in old Chinese restaurants for what they revealed about the history of people of Chinese descent and the legal discrimination they faced for so long.
There are more Chinese restaurants in the United States than there are McDonald’s, and the food they serve is remarkably consistent given much of it would never be served in China.
“A lot of the foods that we think of as Chinese are actually more American and all but unknown in China: General Tso’s chicken, beef with broccoli (broccoli is originally an Italian vegetable), chop suey, egg rolls, fortune cookies. Especially fortune cookies,” journalist Jennifer 8. Lee explained in a 2008 essay about her book, “The Fortune Cookie Chronicles.”
Torin Kranz bides his time in an aged walk-in cooler while his grandparents work the kitchen at the Chicago Cafe.
(Carl Costas / For The Times)
This is especially true at the Chicago Cafe, which serves sausage and eggs, pork chops and apple sauce and, on Fridays, clam chowder, along with traditional Chinese American fare such as chop suey and chow mein.
But if these old restaurants don’t reveal much about Chinese food, Chin said, they do reveal a lot about America.
As a law professor, Chin was interested in how elected officials and labor leaders had crafted laws to advance a larger anti-immigration agenda.
In 2018, he and a colleague published a paper called “The War Against Chinese Restaurants,” which laid out the innovative legal efforts — including zoning, licensing and trying to regulate women’s activities — employed in the early 20th century to drive Chinese restaurants out of business.
Researching that paper made him keenly aware of how many Chinese restaurants had operated in America — and how fleeting many of them were. He knew most authorities believed the oldest continuously operating Chinese restaurant was the Pekin Noodle Parlor in Butte, Mont., which dated to 1909 or 1911.
If the Chicago Cafe started in 1903, that made it older.
Chin asked the Fong family whether he could bring in archivists to try to get to the bottom of the mystery? Sure, the family said.
Paul Fong handles business calls during a busy lunch service at the Chicago Cafe.
(Carl Costas / For The Times)
A group descended on the restaurant, digging into dusty cabinets, the attic and the old storage room that included a bed where laborers used to grab naps. They pored over menus, tax receipts and letters. They dove into the archives of the Woodland Daily Democrat and old yearbooks from Woodland High School.
By last spring, Chin and his co-researchers had produced another scholarly paper. “We believe that this is the oldest continually operating Chinese restaurant in the United States,” Chin said of his finding.
The modest storefront on Main Street — with its cash-only policy — suddenly had a new cachet. Tourists came from Sacramento and San Francisco. Locals came flooding back.
“You can’t even get in now,” said Michelle Paschke, a longtime friend whose family used to run a neighboring store. Paschke sat at the packed lunch counter on a recent afternoon, waiting to pay. All around her, other patrons were in the same situation, holding cash out like supplicants while Olstad gestured that she would be there as quickly as she could.
“It’s been a blessing,” Andy said of the overwhelming interest. “At the same time,” he said, “I do want my parents to relax. And somewhat selfishly, I want them to spend time with their grandchildren.”
Back in the kitchen, Paul and Nancy turned out plates with a lightning rhythm, honed over years of practice. “It’s good I guess. It makes me pretty busy,” Paul said of the lunch crowd.
Still, he added, he couldn’t do this forever. “I’m old,” he said, smiling.
But on this day, he was still working, and the orders were piling up. Nancy gestured to a plate of pork ready to be fried. Paul stepped back to the grill.
It has been a bumpy road for the electric vehicle market as declining federal support and plateauing public interest have eaten away at sales.
But EV sellers could soon receive a boost from an unexpected source: The war in Iran is pushing up gas prices.
As Americans look to save money at the pump, more will consider switching to an electric or hybrid vehicle. Average gas prices in the U.S. have risen nearly 17% since Feb. 28 to reach $3.48 per gallon. In California, the average is $5.20 per gallon.
Electric vehicles are pricier than gasoline-powered cars and charging them isn’t cheap with current electricity prices, but sky-high gas prices can tip the scales for consumers deciding which kind of vehicle to buy next.
“We probably will see an uptick in EV adoption and particularly hybrid adoption” if gas prices stay high, said Sam Abuelsamid, an auto analyst at Telemetry Agency. “The last time we had oil prices top $100 per barrel was early 2022 and that’s when we saw EV sales really start to pick up in the U.S.”
In a 2022 AAA survey, 77% of respondents said saving money on gas was their primary motivator for purchasing an electric vehicle. That year, 25% of survey respondents said they were likely or very likely to purchase an EV.
As oil prices cooled, the number fell to16% in 2025.
In California, annual sales of new light-duty zero-emission vehicles jumped 43% in 2022, according to the state’s Energy Commission. The market share of zero-emission vehicles among all light-duty vehicles sold rose from 12% in 2021 to 19% in 2022.
“Prior to 2022, we didn’t really have EVs available when we had oil price shocks,” Abuelsamid said. “But every time we did, it coincided with a move toward more fuel-efficient vehicles.”
Dealers are anticipating a windfall.
Brian Maas, president of the California New Car Dealers Assn., predicted enthusiasm for EVs will rebound across California if oil prices don’t come down.
“If prior gasoline price spikes are any indication, you tend to see interest in more fuel-efficient vehicles,” he said.
Rising gas prices could be a lifeline for EV makers at a time when federal support for green cars has been declining.
Under President Trump, a federal $7,500 tax incentive for new electric vehicles was eliminated in September, along with a $4,000 incentive for used electric vehicles.
In California, the zero-emission vehicle share of the total new-vehicle market was 22% through the first 10 months of 2025, then dropped sharply to 12% in the last two months of the year, according to the California Auto Outlook.
Meanwhile Tesla, the most popular EV brand in the country, has grappled with an implosion of its reputation with some consumers after its chief executive, Elon Musk, became one of Trump’s most vocal supporters and helped run the controversial Department of Government Efficiency.
Over the last several months, Ford, General Motors and Stellantis have pared back EV ambitions.
Other automakers, including Nissan, announced plans to stop producing their more affordable electric models.
The Trump administration has moved to roll back federal fuel economy standards and revoked California’s permission to implement a ban on new gas-powered car sales by 2035.
David Reichmuth, a researcher with the Clean Transportation program in the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the shift in production plans will affect EV availability, even if demand surges.
That could keep people from switching to cleaner vehicles regardless of higher gas prices.
“This is a transition that we need to make for both public health and to try to slow the damage from global warming, whether or not the price of gasoline is $3 or $5 or $6 a gallon,” he said.
According to Cox Automotive, new EV sales nationally were down 41% in November from a year earlier. Used EV sales were down 14% year over year that month.
To be sure, oil prices can fluctuate wildly in times of uncertainty. It will take time for consumers to decide on new purchases.
Brian Kim, who manages used car sales at Ford of Downtown LA, said he has yet to see a jump in the number of people interested in EVs, hybrids or more fuel-efficient gas-powered engines.
Still, if the price at the pump stays stuck above its current level, it could happen soon.
“Once the gas prices hit six [dollars per gallon] or more and people feel it in their pocket, maybe things will start to change,” he said.
A total of 59 gigawatts of U.S. clean energy projects are facing delays at a time when demand for power from AI data centers is surging, according to a trade group study.
Developers are seeing an average delay of 19 months over issues such as long interconnection times, supply constraints and regulatory barriers, the American Clean Power Assn. said in a quarterly market report.
The backlog is happening despite the growing need for power on grids that are being taxed by energy-hungry data centers and increased manufacturing. The Trump administration has implemented a slew of policies to slow the build-out of solar and wind projects, including delaying approvals on federal lands.
The potential energy generation facing delays is the equivalent of 59 traditional nuclear reactors, enough to power more than 44 million homes simultaneously.
“Current policy instability is beginning to impact investor confidence and negatively impact project timelines at a time when demand is surging,” American Clean Power Chief Policy Officer JC Sandberg said in a statement.
Despite the hurdles, developers were able to bring more than 50 gigawatts of wind, solar and batteries online in 2025, accounting for more than 90% of all new power capacity in the U.S., the report found. Clean power purchase agreements declined 36% in 2025 compared with 2024, signaling that the build-out of clean power in the U.S. could be lower in the 2028 to 2030 time period, according to the report.
Chediak writes for Bloomberg.
The high-stakes feud between Paramount Skydance President Jeff Shell and Las Vegas gambler and self-professed “fixer” Robert James “R.J.” Cipriani spilled into court on Monday.
Cipriani filed a lawsuit against Shell on claims of fraud and eight other counts, alleging that he reneged on an oral agreement to develop an English-language version of a Spanish music show that streams on Roku TV.
He is seeking $150 million in damages.
In the 67-page lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Cipriani claims that in exchange for providing “sophisticated, high-value crisis communications services, entirely without compensation” over 18 months, Shell had agreed to develop the show “Serenata De Las Estrellas,” (Star Serenade), but failed to do so. Cipriani and his wife were to be named as co-executive producers.
“This case arises from the oldest form of fraud: a powerful man took everything a less powerful man had to offer, promised to repay him, lied to him when he asked about it, and then refused to compensate him at all,” states the complaint.
Cipriani — who has producer credits on a 2020 documentary about Vegas, “Money Machine: Behind the Lies,” and the 2015 movie “Wild Card” — intended to make “Serenata” as a “lasting legacy for his mother,” Regina, saying the effort “has been the driving force and the most important thing consuming [Cipriani’s] entire life of almost sixty-five years,” according to the suit.
The show was inspired by a song that the Philadelphia-born Cipriani used to sing to his late mother when he was growing up.
The litigation is the latest twist in a simmering behind-the-scenes scandal that has left much of Hollywood slack-jawed.
For weeks, Cipriani had threatened to file a lawsuit against Shell, with the potential to derail his comeback at Paramount, three years after he lost his job as NBCUniversal’s chief executive over an inappropriate relationship with an underling.
Cipriani’s suit alleges Shell wasdesperate for help in quelling negative stories about him.
It also portrays him as someone who was indiscreet, allegedly sharing sensitive information during the period when the Ellison family, through Skydance Media, was preparing to close its deal to acquire Paramount and then was actively pursuing Warner Bros. Discovery to add to its growing entertainment and media empire.
The eventual rift between the unlikely pair began in August 2024. Patty Glaser, the high-powered entertainment litigator, convened a meeting between the two men.
During the meeting with Shell, the executive expressed to Cipriani his concern that emails and texts between him and Hadley Gamble, the CNBC anchor Shell had been involved with, would come out, saying “that would absolutely destroy me,” according to the suit.
Cipriani claims in his lawsuit Shell was facing “catastrophic personal exposure arising from his conduct toward yet another woman in the media industry,” similar to what had prompted his ouster from NBCUniversal and that he “solicited” his “crisis communications services.”
According to the suit, Cipriani was in a position to help him, having engaged in a “longstanding practice of exposing misconduct in the entertainment and media industries.”
Robert James “R.J.” Cipriani in Amazon Prime Video’s 2025 series “Cocaine Quarterback.”
(Courtesy of Prime)
A high-rolling blackjack player, Cipriani’s colorful résumé includes aiding the FBI in the arrest and conviction of USC athlete-turned global drug kingpin Owen Hanson, who was sentenced to 21 years in federal prison, and filing a RICO suit against Resorts World Las Vegas.
Leveraging his “unique media relationships and industry influence,” Cipriani said in his complaint that he provided Shell with “ongoing threat-monitoring and intelligence services,” and “took proactive steps to suppress, redirect, or neutralize” negative coverage against Shell before publication.
Cipriani said Shell expressed “effusive gratitude” to him after he planted a story about another entertainment industry figure “in order to divert media attention” away from Shell. “Thank you thank you thank you,” Shell wrote in a text to Cipriani, according to the lawsuit, which included a copy of the text.
During tense negotiations over Paramount’s streaming rights for the highly successful “South Park” franchise last summer, Shell allegedly asked to talk to Cipriani about the matter. Cipriani then “orchestrat[ed] the placement of a highly favorable news article,” that was “devastating to Shell’s and Paramount’s adversaries in the dispute,” the suit states.
After a story published in a Hollywood trade, Cipriani wrote to Shell on WhatsApp, “I’m the one that put the article out for you!!!” and “I didn’t want to tell you till it hit so you have plausible deniability.”
According to a message cited in the lawsuit, Shell responded, “I love you!!!! …Thank you Rj,” adding “I owe you dinner at least!”
Despite those boasts, Paramount ultimately paid “South Park” creators millions more than Skydance had intended. To remove obstacles from Skydance’s path to buy Paramount, the media company agreed to two blockbuster deals that include paying the “South Park” production company more than $1.25 billion to continue the cartoon — making it one of the richest deals in television history.
During the course of their relationship, Cipriani further alleges that Shell alerted him to a then-pending $7.7-billion Paramount deal for the rights to UFC fights, while Netflix “believed” it had a “handshake deal” for the same rights, according to the suit.
Cipriani disclosed in his lawsuit that he filed a whistleblower complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the disclosure of material information, claiming that Shell told him that not even UFC President Dana White knew of the transaction. In a WhatsApp message cited in the lawsuit, Shell told Cipriani that the deal was “very hush, hush until we sign.”
While the gambler continued to provide his services to Shell gratis, their relationship began to sour.
Cipriani became enraged that Shell did not uphold his end of the alleged deal to help him with the TV show, viewing it as a slap to him and his mother.
In February, the pair met to resolve their growing dispute. According to the lawsuit, also in attendance was an unidentified entertainment attorney who had represented both men in separate matters.
Patty Glaser has been widely reported as having represented Shell and Cipriani. She introduced them in summer 2024, as The Times reported Saturday.
“We were presented with a draft complaint riddled with clear errors of fact and law,” Glaser said in a statement last week. “We will strongly respond.”
The February meeting did not go well.
Shell not only “refused to compensate” Cipriani, but also told him that he could not “assist” him “in obtaining a television show or other entertainment industry opportunity.”
Cipriani further alleged in his lawsuit that during their “failed summit,” Shell revealed his “disdain” for David Zaslav, the Warner Bros. Discovery CEO, and disclosed that Paramount intended to “sweeten” its pending hostile offer for the studio to fend off Netflix prior to announcing its intention to do so publicly.
After the meeting, Cipriani stated in his complaint that Shell’s attorney privately offered Cipriani a “$150,000 personal loan” to resolve the dispute.
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