65 Restaurant

from Flickr photog and friend of B12, Chicago Sage, who writes:

I went in to 65 for a smoothy (which was tasty) and saw that the take-out menu explains the name:

“About 50 years ago, my father, Danny Hong, and his brother, Kim Hong, came to the United States. They started work at the same restaurant back then.

”Our family's last name is 'Hong' which when spoken or written in Toi Sahnese (one of many Chinese dialects) means 'soup.' At that time, a large bowl of soup was a dollar and a small bowl of soup 65 cents. Since my father was much shorter in height than my uncle Kim, all of his relatives and Chinese friends called him “Small Soup.”

“One day, my father came back to his apartment where many other Chinese men lived. They shared the apartment to save money. He knocked on the door and one of them asked, ”Who is it?“ My father answered ”Small Soup,“ in Chinese. Another said, ”Small soup, that's 65 cents,“ again in Chinese. My father then tried to show off his English and said, ”Look Moe Five.“ 'Look Moe' means 'sixty' in Cantonese (another Chinese dialect). Five was what little he could pull out of his limited English vocabulary. All of them, being amused, then gave him the nickname ”Look Moe Five.“ These days, his friends from way back then have almost forgotten his real name since they've called him ”Look Moe Five“ for all these years.

”I opened a tofu factory some years back. This was just after my mother had passed away, so I named it after her, as “Mei Shun Tofu Products, Co.” I then established these restaurants and wanted to name them after my father's real Chinese name, but he said he'd rather have his nickname used. This was how the name “Sixty-Five Restaurant” came about.

Louis Hong
Owner of Look Moe Five“

65 Restaurant, originally uploaded by ChicagoSage.