Last week, local eatery Koong\u2019s officially closed after over four decades of serving the Milpitas community.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Henry Koong opened the Chinese restaurant back in the 1980s. After he decided to retire, Koong sold the restaurant to Ming Ju Yu in 2000. Yu had been working as a server for Koong\u2019s at the time, and had been looking for an opportunity to have her own place.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
So she and a business partner became the new owners, and they decided to keep the same menu \u2013 but not without adding some of their own flavor\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe continued using all their ingredients and recipes,\u201d she said. \u201cBut we also added our own specialties over the years, like szechuan noodle soup, black bean noodles, and a seafood salad.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
During the two and a half decades that Yu owned the restaurant, there were a couple of memorable challenges. In 2019, there was a kitchen fire, and they had to shut Koong\u2019s down for 6 months. Then, of course, Covid started, and they had to adjust to serving takeout.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just so appreciative of everyone who came to support my business\u00a0 \u2013 especially during Covid time,\u201d said Yu.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yu plans to retire from the restaurant business and will take some time to relax. Beyond that, she isn\u2019t sure what her next move will be.<\/p>\n
When asked what she will miss most about running Koong\u2019s, Yu didn\u2019t hesitate to tell The Beat that it was the customers:<\/p>\n
\u201cI have long-time customers who have been coming continuously over the years,\u201d said Yu. \u201cAnd they\u2019ve become like family. It wasn\u2019t just eat, pay, and go. We would always talk; they became friends. They will be the thing I miss the most after I leave.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week, local eatery Koong\u2019s officially closed after over four decades of serving the Milpitas community.\u00a0 Henry Koong…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89],"class_list":{"0":"post-181074","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-san-jose","9":"tag-san-jose-headlines","10":"tag-san-jose-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}