Chau’s swan song
The end of an era for a Tuebrook institution, the ‘world’s best’ Chinese restaurant
By Laurence Thompson
“They can’t close this place! It’s ours!”
Claire (not her real name) stands between the red-clothed tables heaving with bottles and plates of half-eaten food, gesturing with Shakespearean pathos. The hour is late, in more ways than one. Like many regular patrons of Chau’s, Claire had for years disregarded the owners’ warnings that they were planning to sell up eventually. Now, at last, there was a deal-in-principle, and the threat of the restaurant changing hands (and perhaps even closing for good) was nearing stark reality.
“I know, love, I know,” a diner at another table tells Claire consolingly. Becky, one of the waitresses, steps around them, clearing their plates away with a poker-faced smile. The two patrons — perfect strangers — had not been mollified by Becky’s assurances that the restaurant would remain open after the sale. Talk begins of chaining themselves to the door outside. They’re joking, though by the time they exchange numbers, I start to wonder.
It’s a cliché to call a restaurant a cornerstone of a community. But since the 1960s, this one has indeed become an indelible part of Tuebrook. Even people who move away, like my wife’s family, travel back for special occasions. I’ve heard of patrons driving from as far afield as the Lake District to once again experience its delights. So the imminent prospect of this beloved restaurant changing hands (and chefs) has rattled locals to such an extent that they’re talking about rebellion. I briefly picture the current owner, Mr Feng, still wearing his enormous, seemingly permanent smile as Tuebrook’s over-60s mafia force him to dice onions at gunpoint.
“I’ve been coming here since it was round the corner and up the stairs,” one woman at a nearby table tells me, referring to when the restaurant was still located on Marlborough Road back in the late 1960s and early 70s. My wife and I listen as the older generation swap stories of how the place has changed over the decades. Go to Chau’s for long enough and you’ll inevitably absorb a topsy-turvy oral history: of flamboyant chefs flaying noodles between the tables, when it became a Mersey-spanning franchise; how it was lost and won in high-stakes mahjong games.
I’ve been coming to Chau’s since 2014, which makes me a relative newcomer. I would never have known of its existence had my new girlfriend at the time not been from nearby Fairfield. A product of the leafy suburbs of the Wirral, I grew up going to the other “Chau’s” – Mr Chow’s Eating House – a haute cuisine (up its own arse) Chinese restaurant in Parkgate my mum took me to for passing the eleven-plus. Despite the different spelling, back in the mists of time, two branches of the same family had apparently owned both restaurants, but their paths have long-since diverged – one you might wear evening wear to, while the other puts paper towels over the red tablecloths to catch the inevitable food spillage.
My first visit to the superior Chau’s, where you can eat like a pig without breaking the bank, was also my first time in Tuebrook. After stepping inside the nondescript, sun-faded shopfront — it really is the worst-looking restaurant in the city, at least from the outside — I began to leaf through one of the maroon leather-bound menus.
“You don’t need that,” my girlfriend said, leaving hers unopened on the table. She chose Banquet B for us both – “the one with ribs-in-sauce.” Chicken soup for her, crab for me. And the waitress kindly obliged when we asked to swap the mains to grilled chicken, Peking-style.
While we waited, it was slowly and solemnly explained to me that this was the greatest Chinese restaurant in the world, a place people came to for birthdays, anniversaries, Christenings, bar mitzvahs, or even after funerals, and that, if we ever broke up, I was banned from coming here ever again.
Over the next seven courses, including a cold meat platter with ginger and cabbage that literally makes my mouth water to think about now, spring rolls, and a whole crispy duck, I decided that I would try to hang onto this girl. I’m not saying Chau’s was a crucial factor, but a decade later, we’re now happily married.
We have indeed been to Chau’s for every kind of celebratory and introductory meal. Sometimes just the two of us, but often with extended family. Until recently it was even our Hogmanay go-to, ringing in the New Year with our closest friends over the famous ribs-in-sauce. And I still don’t think I’ve ever looked at the menu.
Years later, when the Feng family who own the place started talking about retiring – still well before Claire’s Rebellion – I asked my wife what she would do if Chau’s ever did close.
“It wouldn’t,” she replied.
But what if it did?
“It wouldn’t,” she repeated, refusing to even consider the possibility.
Yes, but…
“You don’t get it. Your kind [here, she meant middle-class Wirralites] don’t have a place like Chau’s. It’s the cultural dowry I bring to our marriage.”
Since the sale was confirmed last year, she’s had time to get used to the idea. Our last few visits have been more elegiac in nature. As the Fengs don’t have an exact closing date in mind yet, it’s been impossible to know if each time would be our last.
In April, we went for a memorial meal for my wife’s late auntie, another regular and New Year’s stalwart. My wife was heavily pregnant at the time, and we lamented the fact our then unborn son would likely never experience this family tradition.
My mother-in-law is another round-the-corner-and-up-the-stairs-er, as are her friends. She tries to help me reconstruct the timeline. When it first opened, the restaurant was called Mr Lau’s, after the original owner.
Lau was, by the sound of it, a flamboyant, ambitious businessman, with a penchant for skilfully tossing and ribboning the noodles in front of the customers. He franchised out, opening a second branch opposite the old Stanley Abattoir on Prescot Road, and then a third: the much-more upmarket “Lau's Cantonese Style Restaurant” in Rankin Hall, an imposing Victorian pile on Ullet Road by Sefton Park. One of his sons, Richard Lau, apparently opened his own dine-in “Lau’s” opposite the Shippons pub in Irby on the Wirral. (Google tells me there is still a “Lee and Lau’s Banquet House” on Thingwall Road, though it’s unclear if the same family still owns it.)
“It had no atmosphere,” another diner says about the Sefton Park site, with its chandeliers and plush seating. “Anyway, he lost it all to Mr Chau in a mahjong game.”
I’ve heard several variations of this story, some of which do not involve mahjong. Whatever the case, at some point Lau’s did indeed become Chau’s, relocating to its current West Derby Road address. Nobody I speak to has any stories about Mr Chau himself, a much less front-of-house businessman than his predecessor. Everything was about the food. I hear of long-since discontinued dishes, such as fish in chilli sauce, remembered like beautiful dreams.
Mr Feng was initially Mr Chau’s chef. He and his wife Linda bought it from Chau in the early 2000s, meaning there was no decline in the food’s quality or the good value for money, and they unsuccessfully renamed it “Phoenix Palace” (nobody calls it that). Since then, they and their daughters – Lauren, Becky, and Sarah – have run the place as a family business. They work long hours and are seldom shut. Even when Feng once injured his back, people remember “the uncles” – other family members – coming in to help him cook.
This week, we went back to Chau’s for what might really be the last time. We met the author Ramsey Campell and his wife Jenny there, who also remember the round-the-corner-and-up-the-stairs days, and the long-gone Mr Lau tossing noodles like Zorro swishing a rapier. We also took our five-month-old son, who became the fifth generation of his family to visit. (He ordered the Cow & Gate.)
Speaking to Lauren, I understand a little more why the Fengs have decided it’s time to sell.
“Every day we’re open, Dad’s down at the market at 9am,” she tells me, referring to the Meat and Fish Market on Prescot Road, formerly the abattoir Lau bought his produce from many decades ago. “I start work at 11am and I don’t finish clearing up after yous until midnight. Becky, she works a nine-to-five and then starts here at six.” As an example of how elaborate the regular preparations are, even the cold meat platter — the first course of Banquet B — takes three days to prepare.
“Who’s this?” my mother-in-law says as a serious-looking young Asian man in a red and white striped chef’s apron briefly emerges from the kitchen.
“Oh, that’s him,” Lauren says. The new owner? “Yeah. He’s only 32! He’s been in there every night for months. My dad’s teaching him.” (I tried to speak with this mysterious new proprietor about his plans, but he I was told that he was “very, very busy”.)
Perhaps all our doom-and-gloom was misplaced, and Claire’s Rebellion can be put on hold. But can someone really learn Feng’s magic in such a short time? The rib sauce, with its aroma of barbecue and aniseed, and the way the meat slides off the bone, is surely an art only mastered after decades. I’ve never tasted anything like it anywhere else.
But after talking to Lauren and Becky about their mum and dad’s decades of commitment, I feel vaguely selfish. It’s their place, after all. They could’ve sold it to whomever they wanted. Instead, they decided to pass it on to someone determined to not only keep it as a restaurant but try and learn the unique flavours Tuebrook has grown used to since the days of Messrs Lau and Chau. Considering the restaurant’s importance to the local community, not to mention families from all over the North West, we can all hope this is just another chapter in the place’s history and not a definite end.
When is the lease due to change hands?
“Should just be a couple of weeks now,” Lauren says. “Then I can finally go on holiday.”
Correction: This article originally spelt the former name of the restaurant “Chow’s” after research suggested a connection with Mr Chow’s Eating House in Parkgate. After the assurance of several readers who remember the eatery in earlier decades, this has been amended to “Chau’s”.
I was a round the corner up the stairs regular - bring your own booze - fantastic chinese dishes - ribs to die for. The atmosphere was so friendly with everyone in great "spirits" - as the night wore on - the singing and interaction between strangers who all left as friends. The two waitresses - one blonde and one dark hair - names forgotten sorry - were so much part of the wonderful atmosphere. Great memories.
We used to go to this brilliant restaurant in the 70s and 80s each week. Took our own wine, ordered loads of delicious food and ate it all. Only it was called Chau's (not Chow's). We also went to Lau's in Ullet Road, including one night when Souness (looking like Yosser Hughes) was there too. Great memories!