Once a dishwasher, now the owner of Kau Kau BBQ

By Mahlon Meyer
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY

Hock Wo and Randy Wo-Eng (Photo by Assunta Ng)

Fifty years after he started as a dishwasher, Hock Wo, 81, is taking over Kau Kau BBQ.

“He’s done every role from chopping vegetables to barbecuing,” his son, Randy Wo-Eng told the Northwest Asian Weekly. “He’ll remain the face of Kau Kau.”

The purchase of the venerable Chinatown-International District (CID) institution is all about legacy—preserving the legacy of a restaurant that first opened in 1959, said the Wo family.

For the owners to sell it to their chief and longest employee means the traditions—and food—will remain unchanged, they said.

Wo officially took possession on April 8.

Hock Wo and Randy Wo-Eng (Photo by Assunta Ng)

Kau Kau as home

Kau Kau made his life in the U.S. possible.

As a young man, Wo fled China for Myanmar (then Burma). After his sister immigrated to the U.S., she was able to sponsor him the following year, in 1974. Yet he had left the most important part of his life behind.

Two years later, in 1976, he flew to Macau to marry the woman he had been dating before he left home.

Linda Eng, his bride, had been able to meet him in the freewheeling Portuguese colony through her brother, who was working there as a police officer. Bringing her back to Seattle, he found stability and support through his work at Kau Kau.

“They always treated him like family,” said Wo-Eng, who is married to Seattle City Councilmember Tanya Woo.

(Wo was not immediately available for an interview).

The founder’s long journey

Wo’s journey matched, in some ways, a similar one made by his first boss—the founder and first owner of Kau Kau—a generation earlier.

Wai C. Eng (no relation), an immigrant from Guangzhou, had a similar struggle up many mountains—although one that involved an arrival here much earlier.

After immigrating to America in 1937, he returned to China two years later so that he could receive an education steeped in Chinese culture.

However, World War II interrupted the family plans, and he was not able to return to the U.S. until 1946, when he was 17. After graduating from Highline High School in 1951, he was immediately drafted to serve in the Korean War.

When he returned, he used the G.I. Bill to pursue advanced education. He attended Seattle University and the University of Washington. But eventually had to drop out to support family members arriving on these shores.

“He would work very hard the rest of his life,” according to his obituary, which led him to success as a restaurateur and, eventually, as a leader of the Eng Family Association.

In 1959, he opened the first Kau Kau downtown.

This one was partially underground, according to the Wo family.

His second restaurant, also named Kau Kau, but with the expander, “BBQ Market & Restaurant” tacked on, opened in 1974 in the CID.

The reason he gave for opening the emporiums, at the time, was that anyone who wanted to sample Chinese barbecue had to go all the way to Vancouver, B.C.

Eng went on to open another restaurant and an herb shop.

Assuming increasingly prominent roles in the Eng Family Association, he ultimately served as world president.

Along the way, he led the construction of the Eng Suey Sun Plaza, a testimony to his belief of always “investing back in the community.”

Eng closed the downtown Kau Kau in 1985.

But two decades ago, Eng’s daughter, Lynn Eng-Chang, and son in law, Richard Chang, took over the Kau Kau in the CID.

The legacy continues

“It was not an easy thing for them to let go, but they knew the legacy would continue unchanged,” said Wo-Eng.

For one thing, the staff is staying the same. So are the dishes.

Only one initial change, introduced by Wo, is that now patrons can order food online.

During a recent phone call to the restaurant, staff members who had been taking orders by hand for decades were now boning up on online computerized ordering.

“How do you enter that?” an employee was heard asking a manager. “Oh, okay. I got it.”

The lines that snaked out of the restaurant during the pandemic, however, still remain at peak hours.

Mahlon can be reached at info@nwasianweekly.com.