Culture Blend Is Food for Thought : Vietnamese Refugee Owns Successful Kosher Restaurant

It’s the Great American Success Story. And it’s strictly kosher.

It’s the Moshe Dragon glatt kosher Chinese restaurant in a Rockville, Md., shopping center. Located next to Katz’s Kosher Supermarket, the 2-month-old restaurant is at the center of kosher culture in suburban Montgomery County.

Its proprietor is Lenny Ung, 28. No, he’s not Jewish. He’s Buddhist by background, a Vietnamese immigrant who traces his ancestry to China.

With his family, Ung fled the Vietnam War to Cambodia. He then wound up as a Cambodian emigre in a Malaysian refugee camp and stayed there for 22 months before emigrating to the United States in 1980.

Vietnamese Employees

His employees are also Vietnamese immigrants of Chinese descent, except Michael Meyer, a 40-year-old Vietnam War veteran who supervises the kitchen for kosher compliance. Meyer also takes phone orders and works as maitre d’ and cashier.

The restaurant is tastefully decorated with Israeli and Chinese art. By the cash register are Chinese symbols and the 1948 Israeli declaration of independence, in Hebrew. To Orthodox Jews, this blending of cultures has made eating out while observing ancient dietary laws possible.

“Without it, there are no options,” said Rabbi Joel Tessler of the Beth Sholom Congregation in Potomac, Md., who was instrumental in bringing Ung to Washington from Philadelphia, where Ung owns another kosher Chinese restaurant.

Many in New York

With it, Dr. Ron Gartenhaus, a yarmulke-wearing cancer researcher at the National Institutes of Health, was able to enjoy eating out one night in November.

“I come from New York, where I’m used to having all kinds of kosher restaurants--French, Italian, et cetera,” Gartenhaus said. “I come here almost once a week.”

Also among the diners one recent night was a singles group from Adas Israel, a Conservative congregation in Washington. The next day a half-dozen elderly men from the Hebrew Home in Rockville, Md., ate a kosher Chinese lunch. Non-Jews and non-kosher Jews also patronize the restaurant.

Kosher means not mixing meat and dairy products, and eating meat only from certain parts of animals--killed by a religiously trained shohet--that have cloven hooves and chew their cud, according to dietary laws originating in the Book of Leviticus. That eliminates all pork and shellfish. Higher standards of kosher, signified by the Yiddish word glatt , require that the internal organs be free of all abnormalities. Only meat that passes muster makes it to Moshe Dragon.

“We had a Hasidic couple here from Williamsburg, N.Y.,” Meyer said. “They checked out all our credentials” before they sat down to eat.

Closed Saturdays

Moshe Dragon closes Friday afternoons for the Jewish Sabbath and reopens Saturday evenings after dark. It also closes for major Jewish holidays. The cuisine is mostly Sichuan, though Ung’s ancestors are Cantonese.

Soon after coming to America, Ung moved to Philadelphia, hoping to study medicine. But when other family members arrived, he quit high school to help support them by cleaning cars in an auto dealership, picking blueberries in New Jersey and waiting on tables in a Chinese restaurant.

Eventually, he bought a small carry-out food shop in a heavily Jewish Philadelphia neighborhood. It did not do well. The reason, Ung learned, was that the residents were Orthodox.

Ung’s restaurant went kosher, and business boomed. Among his out-of-town customers was Rabbi Tessler, who thought Ung could also succeed with a second restaurant around Washington.

Never Been Tried

With about 175,000 Jews in the Washington area, Tessler noted, restaurants observing the dietary laws had come and gone, but a kosher Chinese restaurant had never been tried. Tessler campaigned to persuade Ung that the Washington-area Jews would enthusiastically support such a place.

Michael Epstein and Dennis Berman, business partners and brothers-in-law who belong to Tessler’s congregation, helped Ung find a location, suggested a name and guaranteed a bank loan to enable their dream to come true. The restaurant opened Sept. 17, in the middle of the Jewish High Holy Days.

At the last minute, Tessler, representing the Rabbinical Council of Washington, helped to get the kitchen into compliance with kosher standards--”with one hand cleaning greasy chickens and with the other hand writing my High Holy Days sermon with a pen,” he said.

Today, according to Meyer, the restaurant, which seats up to 140 people, grosses about $20,000 a week. Saturday and Sunday nights are busiest, he said, with lines of customers stretching out the door.

Social Scene

There’s a lot of table-hopping at Moshe Dragon, with friends meeting friends. Tessler said, “It’s one small step for bringing the community together and showing it’s not as difficult to be kosher. It’s a real Jewish experience.”

The restaurant has attracted its share of Jewish celebrities, such as Hyman Bookbinder, the Democratic Party activist, and officials from the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Recently an Israeli judge ate there.

The judge needed a ride. “My job was to find him transportation to a subway station,” Meyer said. “I made a shiddach (marriage or match). I found a man whose son’s a judge, and he drove him to the station or back to his hotel.”

Having overheard some banter in a corner of the restaurant, a young customer asked Ung, “Are you from the Shanghai synagogue?”

Ung smiled and said, “No, they are just making jokes.”

Ung enjoys the humor. “I believe God helps people,” he said. “If you are honest, do the right thing, God helps you back. I’m very, very happy for the community.”