Kowloon Restaurant in Saugus - Over Sixty Years and Going Strong!
Long, long ago - not before dinosaurs roamed the earth, mind you, but a full decade before I was born! - there was a restaurant called the Mandarin House which opened on August 22, 1950 on the Newburyport Turnpike in Saugus, Massachusetts. The Mandarin House was located in a converted ice cream parlor with a dining room that could hold 40 to 50 customers who dined off a menu which featured a few dozen Chinese and American dishes. In 1958 - the same year that I came into the world - the Mandarin House was bought by Madeline and Bill Wong - the second generation of the family to own the business who changed the name to Kowloon Restaurant and Cocktail Lounge and began to grow the business in ways that their parents - the first generation owners - probably never could have imagined! Over the next 50+ years, the family added five additions to the original building increasing the capacity of diners from 50 to 1,200 customers and turning the structure into something that makes you say ...