Earlier this year, Chicken for Lunch offered its final noon-time service. People waited in line for more than two hours to get the famous dry spicy chicken, one last time.
Amy Quon, who opened the downtown spot in 1992, admitted the final day was emotional.
“I don’t feel that I inspire people, but I feel that people inspire me,” she says. “I’m not a city-builder. I’m not a life-saving doctor. I am not the founder of a charity. But I make genuine connections to everyday people.
“On the last closing day, I was overwhelmed and so impressed by the love, devotion and support.”
Of course, Quon is doing anything but fading away. She’s still the matriarch of The Lingnan, Edmonton’s second-longest standing restaurant (next to the Commodore, which opened in 1942).
The Lingnan is currently in its 77th year of operation, and Quon says she fully expects to be in the restaurant when it celebrates its one-century milestone.
She came to Canada from Hong Kong in 1980, to study at what was then known as Concordia College. It was in Edmonton where she met her future husband, Kinman, who had been a partner in the family restaurant since 1976 (he became the sole owner in 2002).
She launched Chicken for Lunch a dozen years after her arrival, but also wanted to help her husband with The Lingnan. At first, he refused, but eventually she started working there on weekends, greeting customers and becoming the face of the restaurant. She jokes that “I own the owner.”
Over the years, she’s seen customers who first came in accompanied by their moms and dads now bringing in families of their own. Recently, someone celebrated their 93rd birthday at the restaurant, with generations of family members at the table.
“It made me so happy to see it, that they made us a part of their family,” she says.
There are diners who come into the restaurant to see “Mrs. Quon” and the rest of the family. In 2009, The Lingnan was the setting for season three of the Food Network series, The Family Restaurant. That led to a spin-off CityTV/Rogers series, The Quon Dynasty, which aired in 2011.
With the advent of myriad streaming services, TV programs never die. They can be found somewhere. So maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise that, more than a decade after the shows aired, the restaurant still gets visitors who want to take photos with the Quons. She says that the restaurant recently hosted a visitor from Alaska who was a big fan, and there were diners who came from Shanghai just to see the place where the show was filmed. They had saved up just to fly to Edmonton to see The Lingnan and the family they’d watched on their TV screens.
Quon recalls that when The Family Restaurant first aired on The Food Network, they watched it and her son, Miles, believed they would make great stars for the show. His mom laughed it off, saying they were just a simple family in a simple business.
But then the producers did come calling; they’d heard about the Quons, The Lingnan and thought the family would be good for television. Why? A multi-generational business is a great incubating space for the kind of conflict that makes for great reality television. Amy, Kinman, Miles, daughter Mandy and youngest son, Marty, all met the challenge. (In fact, Amy asks during the interview that I should go and reassure Mandy that her mom “did good” when it came to prepping for Edify’s visit.)
“My life is so simple, that’s what I thought,” Quon recalls of the television offer. “Who would want to watch me on the TV and see nothing happen?”
But Quon’s gregarious nature won a lot of fans.
This magazine has featured restaurants since the day it was first published. We have seen a lot come and go. And many of the restaurants we’ve praised have later changed menus, concepts and chefs, or even closed their doors. The restaurant business is very much here today, gone tomorrow. So, the Quons and the Lingnan are a rarity — an Edmonton mainstay that should be celebrated.
“It’s about carrying a positive attitude towards everyone,” says Quon. “You make them feel important, and win their loyalty. You connect with them through their hearts.”
This article appears in the Jan/Feb 2025 issue of Edify
