Big changes may be in store for iconic SLO Chinatown restaurant. What to know
A historic downtown San Luis Obispo restaurant known for its noodle dishes, chop suey and dumplings is due for some big changes this year — and with a possible $50,000 grant on the horizon, its owner’s dreams may come true.
Mee Heng Low has sat on San Luis Obispo’s Chinatown for over a century on 815 Palm St. in its red-and-green tiled glory for 98 years.
Now, the business is looking for some extra funding.
“I started working with SLO County Arts and realized that there’s just lots of grants out there,” manager and chef Russell Kwong told The Tribune during a recent interview. “We’ve just been plucking away at them.”
Kwong is the son of the restaurant’s owner, Paul Kwong.
Russell Kwong said he had been applying for grant after grant since last year, with no luck. But once he heard about the Backing Historic Small Restaurants grant program offering $50,000 for exterior renovations, he was all in.
“This one, we’re very much in line with how they want us to spend the money,” he said. “I think we’re very qualified for this.”
The national grant is offered by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and American Express, where 50 businesses can win the funds, according to the preservation’s website.
The majority of the money, $40,000 , is saved for external renovations, and $10,000 is expected to go to business operations.
San Luis Obispo city business navigator McKenzie Taffe notified Kwong about the grant and helped the business apply.
“It would be awesome for Mee Heng Low to get a grant, especially from a national organization like this,” Taffe told The Tribune. “It’s a real testament to the storytelling that we do about the history of San Luis Obispo.”
Kwong said he felt like the grant was meant to be for Mee Heng Low. One positive sign? While the grant’s deadline was May 30, it was recently extended until June 2.
“It was kind of a good sign for me,” Kwong said. “My guess would be that they don’t have a lot of submissions, and there’s less and less historic businesses.”
Mee Heng Low opened in 1927 with Gin Jack Keen at the helm, according to a 2020 Gin family cookbook. The operations were a family affair, passing down ownership and management duties from cousins to sons.
According to a 1957 article in the San Luis Obispo Telegram-Tribune, the original restaurant was on its last legs and demolished in September 1957, then built to its current two-story structure with two dining rooms.
In August 1998, the Gins sold the restaurant to Sehn and Kim Hyun. The couple ran Mee Heng Low for ten years before retiring and selling it to the Kwongs in 2009, Kwong said.
In a 1998 article in the Telegram-Tribune, Mee Heng Low was described at “funky” and giving a nostalgic ambiance of going back in time to 1988.
After standing in its current state for 68 years, the restaurant is today overdue for some renovations.
With the grant, Kwong said he plans to update the neon signs hanging outside of Mee Heng Low, since the outside is looking “very rundown.”
“It would just breathe some new life into the front facade, and the rest of Chinatown as well,” he said. “We’re this kind of dark spot on the street where it’ll be great to have all this fresh lighting.”
Kwong said the renovation of the neon would take the entirety of the $40,000. The same sign will remain standing, just with some new paint and fresh tubing.
Businesses will receive notice if they qualify for the grant in July — but in the meantime Kwong’s got another headache to worry about.
Kwong told The Tribune on Friday that Mee Heng Low’s building is being sold, but had no further information as of that evening.
It was unclear how that might impact the business that it one of the few remaining vestiges of SLO’s original Chinatown.
“Change is inevitable, but I just want to do the best I can to keep what little left is still alive (of Chinatown),” he said. “It feels kind of weighty sometimes that I have to bear the burden of keeping it going, but it’s satisfying, and I hope it makes people happy.”