After 24 years and two fires, Golden Phoenix, Chinatown Supermarket continue to expand

If you have lived in Oklahoma City for any length of time and you love Asian food — namely Chinese and Vietnamese —chances are you have been to the Chinatown Supermarket and have eaten at the attached Golden Phoenix restaurant, 2728 N Classen Blvd. A much-loved and frequented grocery, it has become an Oklahoman treasure for many.

Traffic around Chinatown Supermarket is telling: People from all walks of life depend on the market for fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, live or frozen fish, drinks, seasonings and household items. They can shop for goods then walk around the corner to dine at Golden Phoenix.

Owners Mary and Larry Lee have taken over surrounding properties to build parking spaces to accommodate growing demand. But these days, homeowners aren't selling; they are hanging onto their homes because they are within walking distance of Chinatown Supermarket.

Fires led to the initial expansions at Chinatown Supermarket

Since its opening on June 24, 1999, Chinatown Supermarket has expanded twice from accidental fires. The first fire broke out on Jan. 11, 2012. From its ashes, Larry built the restaurant and named it Golden Phoenix. And when Larry does something, he does it big.

“It’s all him, the mastermind behind all this,” Mary said about Larry. “He learns to cook and he cooks. He has never done that before.”

The 30-page menu is written in Chinese, English and Vietnamese, and features 274 dishes ranging from simple fried rice to exotic swallows nest soup and popular Vietnamese entrees like pho. The kitchen operates as though there are two separate restaurants: Vietnamese and Chinese. There is also a Chinese barbecue stand where roast duck, pork slabs and marinated chicken hang on metal hooks. Meat, sold by the pound, is chopped, weighed, wrapped and paid right then and there. Such commotion further adds to the bazaar-like atmosphere of the noisy, lively and busy place.

After a second fire occurred a couple years ago in the kitchen, Larry expanded and modernized Golden Phoenix. Out with the old, in with the new. Well not everything was thrown out. The 30-page menu was kept. New windows were installed where there were none. Gray was the modern color of the day so gray walls, tables and chairs replaced outdated ones. The barbecue stand was moved to the back of the supermarket.

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Given their great success, Larry and Mary say they have one more bit of construction left.

“This will be our last feat,” Mary said.

“Time is of the essence,” Larry added.

The building proposal calls for a 30,000-square-foot state-of-the-art grocery store, a stand-alone Golden Phoenix restaurant, and retail rental spaces where the market now stands. Larry, who used to have his own construction company, will be overseeing construction. After all, he was the builder of Chinatown Supermarket back 1999 and both its subsequent remodels.

That was how he initially got involved. He was chosen by Paul and Vicky Hua, the couple who had the idea of building a competing grocery store to the only Asian grocery store Oklahoma City: Cao Nguyen. And Larry's friend and co-investor Soi Ma thought of the name Chinatown. They wanted Chinatown Supermarket to link Oklahoma City to the Chinatowns in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. And to honor their heritage — the original investors, the Huas, the Lees and Soi Ma, are of Chinese descent but also have roots in Vietnam.

Continuing a lifetime of work

On any given day, customers can find Larry and Mary working. They do everything and anything. He is in the kitchen or on the phone; she is busing tables, seating people or going back to the kitchen to check on a dish. They work every day, seven days a week. They employ about 70 people in the market, five master chefs, and about 15 people to run the restaurant.

“I work because I have always liked to work,” said Larry, who will be 70 in 2024, the same year Chinatown Supermarket turns 25.

“It’s a very tough business,” Mary said.

The couple said they love working at the home they built from nothing.

Larry, who changed his name from Lý Tý when he became a U.S. citizen, grew up poor in Vietnam with his older brothers and sister working to help the family. When the war broke out in 1965, his two brothers were drafted into the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. Larry quit school for good at the age of 11 to help his family. He worked for an owner of a store in Ban Mệ Thuột, the capital of Đắk Lắk Province in the central highlands of Vietnam. Known for coffee production, the village offered job opportunities not available in Larry’s village of Bặc Liệu.

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Next to the store where he worked was a supermarket owned by a woman and her husband. The woman, whom Larry affectionally called Bà, watched the young boy work all week then go home and give all his earnings to his father. She admired and loved the boy and eventually asked him to work for her. In time, he fell in love with her daughter, Hiền (the girl who would become Mary), who is six years his junior.

The two were engaged, but Hiền was too young to be married so they had to wait. Meanwhile, the two families became close, and Larry's parents and sister moved to Ban Mệ Thuột. On March 1975, Communist troops took over the town and within the next month, they defeated south Vietnam.

Rich people were tried and convicted of crimes against the state. The Communists took everything in Bà’s four-story home. They confiscated the two warehouses that stored goods. They convicted Bà’s husband of stealing from the state so they sent him to re-education camps with thousands of other south Vietnamese men accused of being allies with the United States. Bà was able to pay 50 ounces of gold for her son and the 24-year-old Larry to escape Vietnam. The first escape ended in capture and three months in prison. When he came home in 1978, she paid for them to escape again.

The second escape landed them in Thailand, and from there Larry was sponsored by a man in Kentucky, where he worked at a tire factory. Not long after, Bà and her entire family escaped to Malaysia. In 1978, the family was united in America. Larry was 24 and Mary was 18 years old when they left Kentucky and flew to Los Angeles.

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The couple rented a home and soon moved the family there. Larry worked as a welder, and Mary attended high school in the day and worked at a restaurant at night. On the weekends, the couple painted houses for money.

Larry eventually became a handyman and learned how to build houses. After two years, he earned his general contracting license, then opened his own construction company.

Larry credits his wife, his mother-in-law, and his in-laws for his life. Because of them, he sponsored his mother, father and sister to the United States.

“I owe my wife and my mother-in-law everything,” he said.

The woman who treated him like a son now lives with Larry and Mary. Though Bà is in her 90s, she also works at Chinatown Supermarket. Their deep commitment to one another and their work ethic shine as they continue to work together, seven days a week.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Golden Phoenix, Chinatown Supermarket were built on hard work on Lees