This Sacramento Chinese restaurant got through COVID shutdowns. Will it survive arson?

Beloved Chinese restaurant Hong Kong Islander survived the pandemic thanks to the determination of its founding family only to face another setback from a fire that is suspected to have been started by an arsonist.

The restaurant at 5675 Freeport Blvd. in Hollywood Park’s Courtyard Shopping Center has been closed since April 14 after fire destroyed half the building and damaged the rest.

“Right now, I feel very bad. The memories — everything is gone. It’s a very sad feeling for me,” said co-owner Kandy Lau, who, with her husband Conrad, founded the restaurant 11 years ago.

This catastrophic fire was the second blaze Hong Kong Islander has dealt with in the past year. Surveillance video captured someone lighting flames outside the front of the restaurant in October, which left a burn scar on an outer wall but didn’t penetrate the building. Security video footage from the night of the April 14 fire also showed someone in a black hooded sweatshirt, pants, shoes and backpack setting down materials in a blue container behind the building.

Hong Kong Islander sits across Freeport Boulevard from the Sacramento Police Department’s headquarters, and the owners submitted their surveillance video when filing a police report, co-owner Jordan Pei said. But this is an issue for the Sacramento Fire Department, a police spokesman said.

The Sacramento Fire Department told The Sacramento Bee in mid-May that its investigation was closed with the fire’s cause listed as “undetermined.”

The reporter emailed the department in June to ask why the cause was undetermined when surveillance video shows a person setting the fire, the response showed the status of the investigation had changed. The department said in a mid-June email that investigators had reviewed video evidence and determined that someone had intentionally set the blaze.

A spokesperson said the fire department needed to “meet with our Investigators ... to confirm and see what we are willing to release” when The Bee asked if fire officials were aware that the video existed prior to the news organization’s initial inquiry.

Investigators are now searching for a suspect, though they aren’t releasing more information at this time, fire spokesman Capt. Justin Sylvia said. A previous fire department investigation led to the May 8 arrest of a suspected serial arsonist less than two miles from Hong Kong Islander.

Arson and aftermath

Pei was in one of Hong Kong Islander’s three walk-in freezers, closing down the restaurant, just after midnight on April 14 when the power cut out. He walked outside, saw smoke and evacuated the rest of the employees.

The person spotted in the Hong Kong Islander’s security video footage appears to drop a match as smoke begins billowing from the blue container, then pushes it toward the building and gathers more debris from the ground to add to the growing blaze.

“I saw the guy keep adding things to make a bigger fire, but I don’t know if he’s crazy or (whether it was) intentional or if he was just playing with fire or what,” Lau said. “Looking at the video, it looks like he’s intentional.”

The immediate pain was severe. Hong Kong Islander had to throw away $60,000 worth of food from its three walk-in freezers after the fire caused the building to lose power, Pei said. Long-term implications are worse. The 10,000-square-foot restaurant will be closed for the next year or two while extensive repairs are made.

In the meantime, Hong Kong Islander misses not only revenue from daily service but catering operations, such as a 400-person wedding it was supposed to feed at Grand Pavilion Banquet Hall. Half the down payment had been paid; Hong Kong Islander had to return that.

Hong Kong Islander’s owners aren’t yet sure how much money they’ll receive from Nationwide Insurance. Insurance policies don’t typically cover arson because it’s a criminal act, said Loretta Worters, the Insurance Information Institute’s vice president of media relations.

Yet even if Hong Kong Islander can break even financially, it wouldn’t replace all that was lost. Hong Kong Islander’s role in the community took a while to develop. Its team of employees, Lau said, have landed jobs at other restaurants.

“I think if you paid me back the money, it’s not what we want. I want my 10 years of effort over there,” Lau said. “We (had) a lot of good customers that became close friends. Our team that was together, they’re kind of totally lost right now. That’s the main loss to me.”

A family’s resilience

Lau immigrated to the United States from China in 1975, followed by her husband a year later. They both attended college in the U.S. before she worked in various state agencies for nearly 25 years, while he opened Mansion Travel, a now-defunct travel agency in Hollywood Park.

The Laus opened New Canton, a dim sum-focused restaurant at Broadway and 26th Street, in 2005, and ran it for five years before selling. Then they opened Hong Kong Islander in 2012, which quickly became one of Sacramento’s largest and most beloved Chinese restaurants, particularly within members of that community.

The 390-seat main dining room filled to near capacity on most weekend mornings as servers wheeled around carts of dumplings, turnip cakes and egg tarts. A 200-seat private dining room hosted wedding receptions and parties.

But eight years after its founding, Hong Kong Islander’s expansive dining rooms sat empty.

Few restaurant concepts were as hurt by COVID-19 as dim sum banquet halls. The emporiums relied on high dine-in volume to pay their sizable rents, and that audience vanished as social distancing took effect.

Large banquets were canceled, cart service was impossible without indoor dining and anti-Asian xenophobia kept some people away as well — or, in the worst cases, led to vandalism and violence.

Longstanding institutions closed in Chinatowns across the U.S., and Hong Kong Islander was making about 15-20% of its typical total gross income during the worst of the pandemic, Lau said.

The Laus were ready to shutter Hong Kong Islander last year before Kandy’s cousin Teresa Lei and her husband Pei asked to buy them out on one condition: that the founders stay on. All four began working together last July, along with about 25 staff members.

Business had picked back up, Lau said, as more catering gigs and weddings led to large orders.

Allison Joe had planned to host her grandmother’s 100th birthday party at Hong Kong Islander. It met the Chinese American guest of honor’s standards while still pleasing the palates of guests from all backgrounds, Joe said.

“It’s accessible. It’s a really good entry point for newbies who want to know more about dim sum,” Joe said. “I’ve taken many non-Chinese people there who wanted to learn more about dim sum. That’s the first place we go.”

Then came the April fire. Plans had to change. Today, chandelier bulbs line the ruined floor, creating a glass minefield. Electrical wires hang exposed from the holey ceiling. In a cruel twist of irony, a metal decoration of a dragon sits across from a phoenix on the banquet hall’s most prominent blackened wall.

“It’s very said that we can survive ... the pandemic but can’t (survive) this fire by some crazy person,” Lau wrote in a text message.

Will Hong Kong Islander be able to reopen after a year or two with no business? The Laus aren’t sure, but they’re committed to giving it a shot.