Sam Woo Restaurant

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Sam Woo Restaurant (三和) is a Chinese American restaurant chain that serves Hong Kong-style cuisine. It has many locations in predominantly overseas Chinese communities of Southern California, in Las Vegas, and in the suburbs of Toronto. It is commonly referred to as "Sam Woo's" as if it were a person's name and a possessive noun by non-Chinese-speaking customers. In fact, "Sam Woo" is a romanization of the Cantonese pronunciation for "triple harmonies", in reference to feng shui principles, including the synthesis of heaven, earth, and humanity.

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The first delicatessen was opened by an elderly immigrant from Hong Kong in 1979 in the Los Angeles Chinatown and later spread to other locations in California, including Monterey Park and Alhambra. The location of Sam Woo has since been relocated to a newer building within Chinatown to include a restaurant and delicatessen where it remains amongst the most popular eateries in the community. There was one in Montebello when 99 Ranch Market operated there (in its original name 99 Price Market), but the restaurant changed its name when one of the employees bought the restaurant from the owner. (The menu is still the same under the name A-1.) The 99 Ranch Market closed when it failed to develop into a major commercial and cultural hub for the pan-Chinese diaspora like those in Monterey Park and San Gabriel and due to property management issues (several Asian stores still exist to cater to the significant local population, including Chinese restaurants and an East-West Bank). It opened in the suburb of Covina, California in 2004, which does not have a large Chinese-speaking population, but it failed the following year as well (it was replaced by a similar, but family own, restaurant). Within Southern California Sam Woo mostly operates in communities where there are mostly immigrants of Republic of China, such as in Rowland Heights and Irvine.

There are two types of Sam Woo restaurants. The first is aptly named Sam Woo BBQ Restaurant (香港三和燒臘麵家; Pinyin: Xiānggǎng Sānhé Shāolà Miànjiā, Cantonese as sew lop mean gar). It is a noodle house specializing in Hong Kong-style barbecue and is typically a small restaurant. It offers a delicatessen with roast duck, soy sauce chicken, BBQ pork, suckling pig, roast pig, congee, yang chow fried rice, chow fun, and bowls of won ton noodles on its menu. You can order take-out, and cash is only the accepted payment. The second, Sam Woo Seafood Restaurant (三和魚翅海鮮酒家; Pinyin: Sānhé Yúchì Hǎixiān Jiǔjiā, Cantonese: som whoa hoy seen joy gah) is an upscale restaurant that serves dim sum and Cantonese-style seafood dishes, such as lobster. The seafood restaurants have large dining rooms and can typically handle banquets for parties, weddings, reunions, and other special events. These restaurants take credit cards.

The restaurant chain tends to operate in suburban "Chinatown" areas. Several, but not all, Sam Woo Restaurants in Southern California are located in shopping centers anchored by 99 Ranch Market stores. The popular Sam Woo BBQ Restaurant as well as anchor tenant 99 Ranch Market have also made the developments of the spectacular Chinatown, Las Vegas possible.

Sam Woo Restaurants are generally popular even with long wait times before being seated at a table are not uncommon at each and every location. As with most Chinese cuisine restaurants, it is also popular with non-Chinese-speaking patrons such as Mexican Americans, Filipino Americans and White Americans (or gwai lo). However, in catering to the tastes of Chinese-speaking customers, many of its specials tend to be posted in Chinese words only.

In 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton held a fundraiser at a Sam Woo Seafood Restaurant in the city of San Gabriel, California. In 2003, it also received media attention when the same Sam Woo restaurant surrounding Chinese businesses in San Gabriel was at the center of the SARS panic, due to an Internet-based rumor, eventually reducing customer patronage. Unlike in Hong Kong or Toronto, there was no actual verified case of SARS reported in San Gabriel or Los Angeles. Currently the restaurant remains highly popular for dim sum.

In Southern California, hoping to capitalize on the success of Sam Woo Restaurants, restaurateurs spawned less-than-successful competing imitations by using very similar-sounding names in English and Chinese. Examples include the now long-gone Sam Doo Restaurant in San Gabriel and the current S.W. Seafood Restaurant in Irvine. In the early 1990s, a similar concept to Sam Woo Restaurant, the now defunct Luk Yue Restaurant also started in Chinatown (LA), and like Sam Woo, it expanded into the Chinese community of Monterey Park, California, Rowland Heights, and Cerritos, California. The chain has since folded and Sam Woo Restaurant remains a popular restaurant among the Chinese communities within Southern California and Toronto.

There exists a popular chain Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, San Francisco called Sam Wo. Despite having a similar name, it is not part of the chain in Southern California and should not be confused with it.

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