Bill Wong spent his life running Chinese restaurants in Montreal.
He opened his first restaurant on Queen Mary Rd. in the 1950's, and his family and friends say he introduced the first Chinese food buffet in the city.
Wong died last week at the age of 93. He would have turned 94 at the end of this month.
“He wanted his customers to be non-Chinese, ordinary Canadians who might not want to go all the way to Chinatown for dinner,” explained daughter and journalist Jan Wong.
Friend and fellow restaurateur Tommy Hum says he got the idea during a trip to Halifax, and Wong decided to try it out in Montreal.
He opened the iconic Bill Wong’s on Decarie Blvd. in 1962.
Though it's been closed for seven years, there are still customers who come looking for their favourite buffet, says John DiPietro of Ambienti Design, which now occupies the building the restaurant used to be in. Wong's son still owns the building on Decarie just north of Jean Talon St.
Chris Carman's office was two blocks from Bill Wong's in the early seventies. It was a favorite lunch spot for his team. They enjoyed the egg rolls – enough to come back three to five times a week.
Besides the egg rolls, Carman says Wong himself drew clients.
“He was always in the restaurant, walking, talking to people. Very friendly individual. Nice man,” he said.
Jan Wong says her father fell into the restaurant business by accident.
“He had studied engineering at McGill and he worked for the phone company, and when he found out what the president of the phone company made he thought well there isn't much room to get ahead and so he quit,” she recounted.
Though he loved his work - at one point running five restaurants - he also enjoyed his retirement. His daughter Jan Wong says his health was failing but his mind was sharp.
“He was happy right until the very end and really well cared for,” she said.
