When my mother Anne was married and raising three children, she was friends with Marion Cunningham, a renowned cookbook author. Cunningham was lifelong friends with Cecilia Chiang, and she took my mom as her guest to two events hosted by Cecilia. The first was a cooking class, the second a Chinese News Years celebration. Anne remembers Cecilia as being always welcoming, always kind, and always gracious. Marion Cunningham would later go on to proclaim that Cecilia did for Chinese cuisine what Julia Child did for French.
Cecilia Chiang was born in Wuxi, Jiangsu, China. She was the 10th of 12 children, born to wealthy parents. She was raised in Beijing, living in a palace. In 1942, when Japan occupied Beijing, she and a sister were able to flee the city by walking for six months to a relative’s home in Chongqiing. Japanese soldiers confiscated their luggage, and the sisters survived on gold coins that they had sewn into their clothes. During World War II, Cecilia worked as a Mandarin teacher for both the American and Soviet embassies. She met Chiang Liang, a professor at a Catholic university, whom she married. They moved to Shanghai and had two children: May and Philip. When the Chinese Communist Revolution broke out in 1949, Cecilia, her husband and her daughter fled China, getting the last flight out of Shanghai to Tokyo. As they were only able to secure three tickets, they left Philip behind with Cecilia’s sister. The family would be reunited almost two years later. While living in Tokyo, Cecilia ran a restaurant called Forbidden City with friends.
In 1960, Cecilia traveled by ship to San Francisco to care for her sister who had just lost her husband. While there, she ran into two Tokyo acquaintances who wanted to open a restaurant at 2209 Polk on Russian Hill[1]. Cecilia impulsively paid the deposit on the space. When the two women backed out and she was unable to get her money refunded, Cecilia made the decision to open a restaurant herself. At this time, non-Chinese San Franciscans were only exposed to Americanized Cantonese food. Cecilia introduced San Francisco to authentic northern Chinese cuisine. Not knowing non-Chinese tastes, she had over 200 items on the menu. She would pare this menu down over time as certain dishes became popular.
The Mandarin Restaurant was opulent. Cecilia hired a couple who had immigrated from Shandong in North China as cooks. Cecilia would wash dishes, scrub floors, and do the shopping. Herb Caen[2], a popular San Francisco Chronicle columnist, was a frequent customer, and was a huge contributor to popularizing The Mandarin. Cecilia would separate from her husband and bring her children to the City. She was the first non-white to buy a home in the exclusive St. Francis Wood neighborhood. She would teach Chinese cooking to James Beard, Marion Cunningham, Alice Waters, and Julia Child. Alice Waters, owner of Chez Panesse in Berkeley, once kicked a hornet’s nest when she said she would like her last meal to be Cecilia’s shark fin soup. Waters got such grief from the Humane Society that she had to publicly state that she would never eat the dish again.
In 1968, Cecilia moved her restaurant from Russian Hill to Ghiradelli Square[3], where it would remain until 2006. In 1975, she opened a second Mandarin Restaurant in Beverly Hills. She ultimately sold that restaurant to her son Philip in 1989, who is also co-founder of the PF Chang’s restaurant chain.
Cecilia sold the San Francisco Mandarin in 1991 and moved to Belvedere. She returned to the City two decades later to be close to her daughter and granddaughter. She was an avid supporter of the Chinese American International School, she wrote two cookbooks, and she remained a restaurant consultant well into her 90s. Two documentaries have been filmed about her: the 2014 documentary Soul of a Banquet, and the 2016 PBS six-part series The Kitchen Wisdom of Cecilia Chang.
The Mandarin Restaurant closed in 2006. Cecilia died on October 28, 2020 at age 100.
[1] Russian Hill: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=3167
[2] Herb Caen: see story coming April 3rd
[3] Ghiradelli Square: see story coming February 21st
