Ying Chen likes to see himself as a trailblazer for east Asian cuisine. In 1980, before he opened his first place, he and a business partner drove around Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio looking for a city without a Mandarin restaurant. In Fort Wayne they found three Chinese eateries, all Cantonese; that’s where Chen staked his claim. Now, after two decades of building an empire based largely on Chinese fast food, he’s testing a new concept: an 80-seat establishment in the South Loop called Oysy. “Think Japanese tapas,” he says.
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At age 18, unlike many Korean-Chinese of similar age who emigrated to Japan and the U.S., Chen enrolled at National Taiwan University to study political science. After graduation he came to Chicago for a master’s in urban studies at Roosevelt University. To make ends meet he waited tables at various Chinese restaurants. A fan of architecture, he soon switched majors and schools. Still undecided, he told his faculty adviser at the School of the Art Institute that he was thinking about entering the restaurant trade. To his surprise, he recalls, “She said, ‘Go, go, make money.’ I thought she felt I had a talent for design.” It was a wake-up call.
“That was the early 80s, during the boom in malls,” he says. “I just worked out deals with developers.” At one point he juggled projects in five states and as far south as Tennessee.
Indeed, Oysy’s dishes–from maki to dumplings–are a feast for the eyes. Worth checking out are orange shrimp tempura ($6), pickled Japanese eggplant ($4), scallop emerald maki ($9), grilled toro steak ($10), and, for the more adventuresome, a sampler of tofu salads ($6) or sea-urchin-and-fish tempura ($8).
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Dorothy Perry.
