{"id":195,"date":"2007-10-06T08:21:54","date_gmt":"2007-10-06T13:21:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/2007\/10\/06\/theyve-starbucked-the-kong\/"},"modified":"2007-10-15T22:31:58","modified_gmt":"2007-10-16T03:31:58","slug":"theyve-starbucked-the-kong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/06\/theyve-starbucked-the-kong\/","title":{"rendered":"They&#8217;ve Starbucked the Kong!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I went back to Harvard yesterday with my friend Chris and stepped into the Hong Kong Chinese restaurant and was shocked. They&#8217;ve renovated the venerable half-century old <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hongkongharvard.com\/\">Hong Kong Chinese restaurant<\/a> (which until now basically looked like something from Happy Days, vinyl booths, cracked linoleum and all) and made it look like Starbucks on the inside.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/2007\/10\/06\/theyve-starbucked-the-kong\/view-of-hong-kong-chinese-restaurant-in-harvard-square-post-2007-renovation\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-196\" title=\"View of Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant in Harvard Square post 2007-renovation.\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/2007\/10\/06\/theyve-starbucked-the-kong\/view-of-hong-kong-chinese-restaurant-in-harvard-square-post-2007-renovation\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-196\" title=\"View of Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant in Harvard Square post 2007-renovation.\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/hongkong1.JPG\" alt=\"View of Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant in Harvard Square post 2007-renovation.\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more-->To be fair, the reason the Kong has been able to survive as a family-owned business for so long is that they <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecrimson.com\/article.aspx?ref=97790\">bought the building a long time ago and became their own landlord.<\/a> (The Chinese love real estate.)<\/p>\n<p>I have many fond college memories of late nights (often involving the school paper) with scorpion bowls, &#8220;peking ravioli&#8221;and reading fortune cookies fortunes out loud while appending &#8220;in bed&#8221; to the end of them in large groups.<\/p>\n<p>One of the charming things about the Kong was that it was so defiant in the face of gentrification in Harvard Square. It was like &#8220;this is who I am, take it or leave it.&#8221; It felt like a throwback to a different era &#8212; and though it, you felt a sense of connection to the generations of students who had passed through it. Not the old ivy white-shoe T.S. Eliot-generation but rather to students that were still alive.<\/p>\n<p>Now it has the overhanging colored lamps, the weird modern equivalent of non-offensive floral prints (the desert palate with odd geometric shapes, you know what I am talking about. They will be so dated in like 10 years), and a flat screen television!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/2007\/10\/06\/theyve-starbucked-the-kong\/bar-in-the-hong-kong-chinese-restaurant-in-harvard-square-post-2007-renovation\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-197\" title=\"Bar in the Hong Kong Chinese restaurant in Harvard Square post 2007 renovation.\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/2007\/10\/06\/theyve-starbucked-the-kong\/bar-in-the-hong-kong-chinese-restaurant-in-harvard-square-post-2007-renovation\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-197\" title=\"Bar in the Hong Kong Chinese restaurant in Harvard Square post 2007 renovation.\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/hongkongbar.JPG\" alt=\"Bar in the Hong Kong Chinese restaurant in Harvard Square post 2007 renovation.\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I was not the only one that was disconcerted. A large group of like 10 people walked in and were visibly upset. They were like &#8220;what happened?&#8221; And then they left.<\/p>\n<p>I ordered a plate of Peking ravioli (&#8220;potstickers&#8221; or &#8220;guotie&#8221; or &#8220;fried dumplings&#8221;) to comfort myself.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/2007\/10\/06\/theyve-starbucked-the-kong\/peking-ravioli-at-the-hong-kong-chinese-restaurant-in-harvard-square-in-2007\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-198\" title=\"Peking Ravioli at the Hong Kong Chinese restaurant in Harvard Square in 2007\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/2007\/10\/06\/theyve-starbucked-the-kong\/peking-ravioli-at-the-hong-kong-chinese-restaurant-in-harvard-square-in-2007\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-198\" title=\"Peking Ravioli at the Hong Kong Chinese restaurant in Harvard Square in 2007\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/hongkongpekingravioli.JPG\" alt=\"Peking Ravioli at the Hong Kong Chinese restaurant in Harvard Square in 2007\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/2007\/10\/06\/theyve-starbucked-the-kong\/peking-ravioli-at-the-hong-kong-chinese-restaurant-in-harvard-square-in-2007\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-198\" title=\"Peking Ravioli at the Hong Kong Chinese restaurant in Harvard Square in 2007\"> <\/a><\/p>\n<p>The food has not changed. Scorpion bowls, peking ravioli and scallion pancakes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I went back to Harvard yesterday with my friend Chris and stepped into the Hong Kong Chinese restaurant and was shocked. They&#8217;ve renovated the venerable half-century old Hong Kong Chinese restaurant (which until now basically looked like something from Happy Days, vinyl booths, cracked linoleum and all) and made it look like Starbucks on the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinese-food","category-chinese-restaurants"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2pydS-39","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}