In the thirteen years he’d operated his increasingly popular Chef Lee’s Peking Restaurant in the east end of Columbus, Georgia, Joe Lee tracked his trade. He learned who they were, what they wanted and in what quantity. This was second nature to Lee whose background was foodservice. It was what he’d been taught in his native Taiwan where his parents and their parents before them had operated restaurants.
When he landed in San Francisco in 1978, working with an uncle for three years, the same concentration on customers applied. Ditto when he relocated in Atlanta, in partnership with his wife’s uncle. It had paid off handsomely since 1984 when he arrived in Columbus and established a restaurant of his very own. But Chef Lee, as he has come to be known, went beyond that. He looked into the demographics of this growing city, noting well that much of his trade traveled miles, bucking busy traffic middays and evenings from the burgeoning north end of the city to be his guests.
by Jeanne Graff
This revelation dovetailed nicely with his plan to build another, larger restaurant. Why not put it where that trade came from — in the north end? However, Chef Lee’s Peking II wouldn’t be just another, larger restaurant. Columbus had been too good to him, and, while still keeping his east end patrons satisfied at his original restaurant at 4248 Buena Vista Road, Chef Lee reciprocated with what has become a landmark in his adopted city.
“I talked to several builders, several architects before I got one to agree with my ideas,” he said. His plan was to have the new restaurant be a palatial Chinese-style building, a “feast for the eyes” of all who would see it. When he did find the right architect, Chef Lee was adamant about authenticity: his new restaurant would be symmetrical, within and without. It would throb with color. He was determined to have a barrel tile roof with ornamental finials adorning gables and pinnacle. There would be columns, ornamented cornices, carved corbels. Authenticity, he was told, carried a big price. If the required materials could not be found in the United States, Chef Lee had connections back home — in Taiwan and on the Mainland. And that is where most of the materials came from.

Once they were assembled, work began on the two-plus-acre site at 6100 Bradley Park. That was a lot of land in a pricey part of town. Even the architect and builder who had agreed with Chef Lee on all the other specs questioned the size of the property. Chef Lee had a ready answer. Parking, he told them, would never be a problem at Chef Lee’s Peking II. And it isn’t. Even on days with bumper crowds there is always parking, free and available, at Chef Lee’s Peking II.

Bumper crowds are the order rather than the exception here, particularly on Sundays when the after-church crowd begins to arrive shortly before noon. If Southern tradition says Sundays are family days, the Peking II proves it. Families are the rule for most of the day and adult servings are such that kids are presented with an empty plate and the clan proceeds to “eat Chinese.” It’s an adventure in variety and you can’t beat the price.

If Chef Lee’s new restaurant is a feast for the eyes, menu presentations are much more of a feast — exquisitely presented, fragrant, and distinctively delicious. “We make (each dish) pleasing to the eye,” said the Chef. “When I first came to Columbus, I began to carve carrots and fruit for the plates. Everybody likes it, this artful presentation.”

The menu embraces both Peking and Szechuan style cooking with complete dinners in each style offered for two or more guests. In both, the variety increases with the number of guests. Peking, at $13.95 per person, offers sizzling Mongolian beef and sweet-and-sour pork with rice, rice soup, egg roll, tea, fortune cookies and dessert included. Desserts, when ordered separately, are a standard $5.95 per to give an idea of the value.
If there are three at the table, add almond chicken to be shared. Northern style vegetable selections arrive with a fourth guest, mu shu pork for a fifth, and sizzling rich shrimp for the sixth. Seven or more guests — serve Happy Family. Happy Family, listed in the seafood menu for $12.95 per person, combines assorted seafoods with slices of tender beef, chicken, roast pork and vegetables.
Szechuan, with hotter spices and more vegetables, includes, for $14.95 per person, hot and sour soup, pot stickers, crab meat ragoon, princess prawns and garlic chicken. Add Szechuan beef for a third guest. With a fourth guest, add a medley of straw mushrooms, bamboo shoots and broccoli. Then it’s mu shu beef for five, chung king pork for six, and seven or more guests bring shrimp, scallops and crab meat to the table.

These are special occasion meals, but there’s a` la carte for the pick-and-choose lighter appetites. Appetizers, priced from $2.50 (two egg rolls) to $5.95 (shrimp toast) number a dozen and should come with the caution “for the hearty appetite.” Here’s where a “split” would work if two guests can agree on a single dish. That’s a tough decision when there are ten pork dishes, two dozen of chicken, a like number of beef, and 30 of seafood and seafood/meat combinations. For the vegetarian appetite, eight selections, and for the near-vegetarian, fried rice servings embellished lightly with beef, pork, chicken or shrimp.

Dinner hour prices range from $8.95 for pork and most poultry, $9.95 to $12.95 for beef, and $11.95 to $14.95 for seafood. The exception is Peking duck at $25.95, a delicacy prepared in a gas-fired Chinese barbecue oven. Management requests 24 hours advance notice for this dish.

Midday meals are another matter. Business people have come to count on prompt service at Chef Lee’s, but there’s no sacrificing variety. A separate listing of 48 luncheon specialties ranges from $4.95 to $6.95 but, here again, each guest is served an egg roll, fried won ton, fried rice, soup of the day, fortune cookies and tea. Chef Lee said carryouts account for approximately 20 percent of total sales, most of them at midday even if it is a matter of not having the pleasure of soup and tea when eating at the desk.

With this extensive a menu, a tour of the kitchen was requested. How could food in such wide variety be prepared and served with such speed? Chef Lee explained that “gas works its hot magic” in his kitchen and led us to the back of the house. Here again his planned symmetry was evident. At either end of the 2,000 square foot kitchen were prep lines, one for meats and fish, the other for vegetables. Separated from the prep lines by a broad aisle was a lineup of four wok ranges, designed for maximum efficiency with two wok burners on either side of a central stock pot burner. A staff of six were handling orders as they came in.
The Chef elaborated on his equipment, all U. S. made and measuring up to the demands of this kitchen. “Some restaurants in Taiwan had natural gas, but most of them used propane. We have to have gas here. The cooking style demands the big flame.” With that he stepped up to a range and demonstrated his point: a twist of the control wrapped the wok in the big blue flame. He further explained that “Chinese needs fire fast and then, in maybe 30 seconds, it’s finished. Turn off the gas and the heat is gone. Cook it too long and you lose the crunch.”
Chef Lee demonstrates how a high-pressure gas flame wraps the woks in his restaurant. “We have to have gas here,” he says. “The cooking style demands the big flame.”
He then directed attention to another wok station where a member of his kitchen staff mixed by shaking a large wok of fried rice. “It takes a little flame, too,” said Chef Lee, “to keep this wok hot but not cooking.”

Don Stephens, Commercial Sales Representative for United Cities Gas, had arranged the tour and knew Chef Lee’s kitchen from the beginning. “Anytime there’s a development taking place in the area, it’s my business to get in there and make sure United Cities can do all it has to do for their particular requirements. What I did when Chef Lee was building is come in and observe what was needed and made notes. That would take in meter size and possibly a pressure increase based on the load that his kitchen would demand because this kitchen uses a lot of gas.
“As an ongoing service to consumers, we keep in contact so we can stay on top of needs. New equipment might demand that we upsize his meter or the pressure here.”

It appeared that Chef Lee’s kitchen was fully equipped, but there were more units to be shown. Four deep fat fryers are indispensable, said Chef Lee, for a number of fried foods on his menu but particularly for egg rolls. Egg rolls here, filled with fine-shredded pork, chicken, bean sprouts and bamboo shoots, command all the popularity they deserve. The frying medium must be of constant high temperature to seal the wrappers — no variation. With gas, this is easily achieved no matter what the demand.
Don Stephens, Commercial Sales Representative for United Cities Gas, discusses the number of menu selections with Chef Lee. According to the Chef, natural gas is the only cooking fuel that can keep up with demand at his busy restaurant in Columbus, Georgia.
When Chef Lee isn’t on hand to double check on the visual appeal of each dish that leaves his kitchen, he has specially trained assistants to stand in for him. That prompted the question: where had he found fellow Chinese to staff his two popular restaurants? Networking works as well for Chef Lee as owner as it did for the owners that hired him when he was in search of employment.

“If I need five for help, they send them,” he said. “I don’t want to train anybody, so they must be qualified cooks. Then I can teach them easily, and they can learn my style because they know their basics.”

If basics are required of personnel hired for the kitchen, there is equally basic decorum required of all who meet and greet the public here. In charge of this is Mrs. Lee who serves as hostess and trainer, schooling wait staff in her unobtrusive yet welcoming manner. Once seated, guests are served a fragrant, steaming tea, a refreshing quaff to enjoy while making their selection.
The restaurant seats 270 with one large and two small dining rooms on either side of the center hall. A full-service bar with seating for ten is at the far end of the hall. Doubling as a comfortable holding area should there be a wait, the center hall is furnished with carved cherrywood chairs, settees and tables as is the entire restaurant.

“Everything except the (superstructure of the building) is imported,” said Chef Lee. “Doors, glass panels, window ornamentation, wail hangings, tables and chairs, everything.”
Authenticity distinguishes the interior of Chef Lee’s Peking II restaurant, furnished and decorated throughout with imports.
It was Stephens who asked about the carpet: “Is that imported carpeting?”

“The carpet is genuine Dalton,” our host admitted with a grin, referring to the Georgia city 200 miles north where 80 percent of all American carpet is loomed.

On that light note, Chef Lee invited us to stay for lunch. Time constraints were offered as reason to decline, but the Chef would hear none of it. “With gas, just five minutes,” he said. And within five minutes, there it was, a feast for the eyes as well as the palate.
Gas Equipment:
16 – 125,000 BTU Model #3lbc American Wok Company Woks

 1 – 105,000 BTU Hatco Powermite Gas Booster Water Heater Model # PMG-100

 4 – 105,000 BTU Vulcan Gas Turbofire Tube Type Fryers Model 7891

 1 – Win Smokehouse Barbecue Oven
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