David Leong, who put Springfield, Missouri, on the culinary map by inventing Springfield-style cashew chicken that many other Chinese restaurants adopted, has died. He was less than a month short of his 100th birthday.
Leong lived quite a life. He fled China in 1938 when Japan attacked his hometown. He immigrated to New Orleans, joined the U.S. Army and stormed the beaches at Normandy during D-Day in 1944. After the war, he found out his wife was still alive in China and brought her to America.
He worked in restaurants in New York City, Denver and Philadelphia before settling in Springfield to open Leong’s Tea House in 1963.
According to the Springfield News-Leader:
That’s where he created Springfield-style cashew chicken, which is made with deep-fried chicken and slathered in a brown gravy of soy sauce, oyster sauce and stock with green onions and halved cashews.
But his restaurant also served traditional Chinese food, which many credit with introducing the area to Asian cuisine and paving the way for other immigrants to find success in the area.
He closed the restaurant in 1997 after his wife died, but his son carried on in the restaurant business. They founded Leong’s Asian Diner in 2010. Jack was 89 at the time.
KY3 reported his Army days proved influential to his future:
Leong served as a cook in the 4th Wing that stormed Omaha Beach. His Army buddies always told him they were the best fed outfit in Europe. They encouraged him to open his own restaurant. Southwest Missouri Congressman Billy Long later honored him with new medals from the war after Leong never received them. […]
“His military buddies would come and visit him and introduce their wives to my dad and say, ‘This is the guy I was telling you about honey. If he was a woman, I would have married him for his cooking,‘” Wing Wah said with a laugh.
Launching his restaurant during the early 1960s in the Missouri Ozarks wasn’t easy. A 2014 documentary film about Chinese food in the U.S., titled “The Search for General Tso,” revealed Leong’s restaurant was firebombed before it even opened. He persevered.
This video explains Leong and the Springfield cashew chicken phenomenon well:
The cashew chicken dish in Springfield is so iconic that a developer just a few years ago proposed building a giant cashew near the city’s downtown.
Arrangements for Leong are pending.
(Hat tip to Tonya Pike; image of Springfield cashew chicken in Springfield, Missouri, by Joel Johnson via Flickr)