It’s the end of an era for Margaret Kuo, but not the end of the line

I had come one last time to hear the gong, the ceremonial fanfare that announces the entrance of a Peking duck — one of the region’s best — into the dining rooms of Margaret Kuo’s. It was a few days before the closing of her eponymous flagship restaurant in Wayne last week, an end of an era for one of the region’s most enduring restaurateurs, who introduced many in Philadelphia’s western suburbs to regional Chinese cooking long before it became more common due to changing tastes and demographics. But I was too late: The last ducks had been sent to a fundraiser in Radnor, as Kuo prepared to finish her 22-year run there on a philanthropic note.

If there was already a sense of melancholy in the air as devoted regulars dabbed their tears, posed for pictures, and gave farewell hugs to Margaret’s husband and partner, Warren Kuo, my unsubtle disappointment did little to lift the mood. I politely begged. Still no gong for me.

“It’s bittersweet,” Margaret told me the next day over the phone. “The hardest thing to let go of is what we’ve built with our customers. We’ve practically lived with them and shared their joys and sadness.”

It’s never easy to lose a restaurant that’s become woven into the fabric of a community.

The Kuos still have two other locations in Delaware County — Margaret Kuo’s Kitchen at Granite Run Promenade, and a space at the Lancaster County Farmers Market. This is a “consolidation, not retirement,” Margaret says. They had already closed the Margaret Kuo’s in Media and the Mandarin in Malvern during the pandemic. But the Wayne dining room was her prime Main Line showcase, a bi-level building they constructed from the ground up with a plush decor, private rooms, and more expansive menus, including a Japanese concept and tatami room on the second floor Kuo had built by Japanese artisans in New York, then reassembled in Wayne.

The Chinese menu downstairs, even without the cracker-skinned tawny ducks her chefs would carve tableside and wrap into supple pancake bundles, remained a treasure trove of dishes, each one a small totem of the impact Kuo had throughout her remarkable 50-year career. There were Northern-style open-ended potstickers with meaty fillings poking out of their hand-rolled wrappers. Wontons glistened in crimson pools of Szechuan chili oil. A steamer basket of delicately pleated xiao long bao were a reminder that Kuo was the first to introduce Shanghai soup dumplings to this region in 2002. A fragrant duck soup radiated the herbal bitterness of tender ginseng stems. Kung pao came with the option of rabbit. Clams in basil sauce and oyster pancakes represented her native Taiwan. And then there was the massive Shanghai-style braised pork shoulder glossed in a sweet mahogany sauce perfumed with five spice.

Many of these dishes are now commonly found across the Philadelphia area due to demographic changes; between 1980 and 2021, the Chinese population grew by 252%. Many of the arrivals, coming from regions across China — either to study at local universities or work in the pharmaceutical, health care, or tech industries located in the suburbs — actively drove menu changes in Chinatown and beyond. Prior to that growth, Warren Kuo says, most suburban Chinese restaurants still featured the chow mein and chop suey standards of Americanized Cantonese cooking.

While Kuo’s celebrated contemporary, Susanna Foo, was making national waves in Center City by trailblazing the Asian fusion movement with Frenchified versions of Chinese cuisine, Kuo stuck to presenting traditional dishes with the best possible ingredients made by skilled chefs who replicated her elegant touch. “When I interview a chef I’d simply ask them to make fried rice and I could tell right away,” said Kuo, who was a chemist before becoming a restaurateur. “How did they add the eggs? Did they cook the onions too short or overcook them? Timing is important and you must smell it. I can tell if there’s too much sugar in there. My food has to be simple.”

Kuo’s restaurants won numerous accolades over the years from local media, including three-bell ratings more than once from The Inquirer. She was also invited to participate in a James Beard Foundation event, Dumplings & Dynasties, in 2008.

“I always wanted people to taste my culture through food,” says Kuo, who also ground fresh soy milk and made fried crullers and sesame pockets for Chinese-style weekend brunches in an effort to retain an Asian clientele as part of her diverse customer base.

Kuo’s notion of culture is all-encompassing, as evidenced by the ancient verses of Tang Dynasty poet Li Po (701-762 AD) mounted on the wall in Chinese characters and translated into English for table displays. It talks of a lonely soul in a garden toasting the moon: “While I’m still sober; we’ll make merry together. Then, drunk, go our separate ways. But let’s pledge eternal friendship; And meet again beyond the Milky Way.”

Paired with consistent quality and a handsome setting from Warren’s former furniture and import business, Pearl of the East, Margaret Kuo’s cultivated a devoted audience. That includes Ted Merriman, 43, a library employee at Eastern University who’s eaten at the Wayne location once a month since it opened.

After initially visiting the tatami room for its Japanese offerings — it was one of the suburbs’ best destinations for sushi — he discovered the restaurant’s separate Chinese language menu around 2010 and used the then-relatively new technology of Google Translate to discover other dishes that piqued his palate, from marinated jelly fish to sea cucumbers, cold beef and tripe in chili oil, West Lake fish stew, and a Taiwanese pork intestine stew.

“She’s been a bridge between worlds, is how I see it,” Merriman says. “She’s definitely helped more Westerners appreciate Chinese cuisine.”

Merriman was among the regulars who stopped by Tuesday while the Kuos were packing up. He came to pay his respects — and browse the walls for antique porcelain plates to purchase as a souvenir.

“They have good taste,” he said.

It was Warren’s desire to retire that finally prompted the Kuos to sell the Wayne Margaret Kuo to Win Signature Restaurants, which owns Asian fusion hot spots Teikoku and Azie on Main. The 83-year-old Warren still occasionally busses tables late at night: “I can’t do the daily grind anymore.”

Margaret, meanwhile, is eager to downsize further, to just one full-service restaurant: Margaret Kuo’s Kitchen, a recently built replacement to Peking, which closed in 2015 during the Granite Run Mall’s redevelopment. (The Kuos plan to keep a presence on the Main Line long-term, with no plans to close their outpost at the Lancaster Farmers Market.) Yes, you can still taste all of Kuo’s classics there, including the famous Peking duck. But Margaret is most excited to refocus on her passion for studying food, diving deep into her collection of hundreds of cookbooks. She also hopes to write a memoir.

“At this age,” says Kuo — who declines to divulge her age — “nothing is more important than doing what your passion is. For me that is my food and my loving, loyal customers. I have so many stories to tell today. But maybe I’ll cry tomorrow.”