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In a world where fusion seems to be overtaking tradition and chain eateries are overwhelming family-run restaurants, Hollister’s Cheung Sheng Chinese Restaurant stands its ground and prospering thanks to loyal customers and strong word of mouth.
Founded in August 1988 by Te Cheng Fu, four years after he and his family immigrated from Central China, the restaurant was named Cheung Sheng—“long victory”—in the hope of bringing his family enduring good fortune and success.
“He grew up in hard times,” said his son Yauwai Fu, the current owner. “He was a new immigrant with limited education but he was not a quitter. It was just the way he looked at life, I guess.”
Fu said his father had not been a chef in China, but had experience making noodles and tofu. His first jobs were in Chinese kitchens in San Jose, Cupertino and Palo Alto before he decided to venture out on his own.
“My dad found a restaurant called ‘Winnie’s Kitchen’ for sale,” Fu said, “and Hollister seemed to be a pretty good fit to raise a family. The town was very small, you know.”
First located at 201 Sixth Street, 14-year-old Fu began working there as soon as it opened, cleaning tables, washing dishes and serving food while attending Rancho San Justo Middle School.
“You help out where you can,” Fu said. “Later on I started chopping vegetables and doing things here and there, watching him cook and making the salads.”
Fu said the style of food has not changed much since those first days. He describes it as traditional American Chinese, with all that entails, starting with the adults in the kitchen cooking and the kids at a table in the dining room doing their homework—at one point in his life, Fu said, he was that child.
Fu said there is a trend in Chinese restaurants towards more authenticity, with a traditional menu with items like hot pot, to cater to a contemporary Chinese population.
“Our style of cooking is just more simple,” he said, “Ours is the Chinese style from the 50s, 60s, 40s, which caters more to the American population.”
This means, of course, an eminently affordable menu. There are a dozen lunch items, like sweet and sour pork, chicken chao mein, and garlic beef for $11.99, and they include rice.
The least expensive entrée is fried rice made with either vegetables, chicken, or pork, for $10.99, and the rest of the dishes on the menu comfortably range from $12.99 to $15.99. The most expensive is one of the “chef’s special recommendations,” Seafood Vegetables with prawns, scallops, and squid, sauteed with fresh vegetables, at $16.99.
Steamed rice is another two bucks, and the portions of all the dishes are bountiful; no matter what you order, you are likely to take home leftovers. Splitting a dish and adding rice, a couple could leave Cheung Sheng happily fed for around $20.
There are also family specials starting at $34.99, which includes fried wonton and a quart each of pork fried rice, pork chow mein and either cashew chicken or sweet and sour pork. The $66.99 special, the highest-priced item at Cheung Sheng, includes a very generous selection: a quart of each of six dishes.
Keeping prices low, Fu said, is a bit of a balancing act. As with every restaurant, labor and food costs went up dramatically since the COVID pandemic, with the cost of their beef, for example, going up around 60%.
Running a restaurant,” he said, “is getting really tough. I try not to raise my prices, and my wife and I do a lot of the work here to keep the labor costs down. It’s less profit, but we are trying to keep things affordable.”
(Fu also bucks the trend by not adding a surcharge for using a credit card.)
As with traditional American Chinese restaurants, the menu is deceptively massive, listing over 100 items including a dozen seafood dishes, 15 variations of rice and noodles, and 14 Chef’s Specials. But, Fu said, it is not as daunting as it might seem.
“When it comes down to it,” he said, “there’s only 20 or 30 dishes there. The chow mein, for example, is five or six times because of different meats.”
That said, you will find all the familiar favorites that you might gravitate to. For me, it’s items like the excellent hot-and-sour soup, with just the right tartness and heat, or the lemon chicken, with a delightful sweetness and tang.
Fusion is great, but I would trade it in any time for the homemade comfort-food appeal of their savory, vegetable-packed mu shu pork, or the satisfying warmth of the chicken with hot-spiced sauce.
(There are three dozen items on the menu marked “hot and spicy.” It is a bit of a misnomer that might keep some from otherwise ordering them. Fu said he has noticed the heat of the peppers used in cooking becoming milder over the years, and the spice level is considerably less than what might be labeled “spicy” in a Thai restaurant.)
Fu said the menu hasn’t changed much since 1988, with only a few items added, like orange chicken, and a few removed when demand for them falters.
“My wife and I,” Fu said, “are not the visionary cooks like you see on Top Chef. We’re not here to experiment. We just want to uphold a legacy I’ve been involved with since I was a kid.”
Quality control is critical when sourcing ingredients like the fresh produce used in most dishes, and Fu also cuts his own meat. Some ingredients, like the water chestnuts, are imported directly from China for added authenticity. And the house-made chili sauce has been a staple since the beginning.
The results out of the kitchen can be gauged by the loyalty of the clientele, some of whom, Fu said, have been coming since the restaurant opened. And it is a customer base that can be relied on, as seen following the 2020 fire that gutted Cheung Sheng and nine other businesses in downtown Hollister.
Fu said it took over a year to find and establish the current San Benito Street location, but the family was able to survive both the pandemic shutdowns and the year-long search thanks to customer loyalty.
And on October 27, 2021, the frenzy over the restaurant reopening was reported in an Instagram post by BenitoLink: partway through the day, Cheung Sheng had to stop taking orders because the staff could not keep up with the demand from “the overwhelming support from the community.”
Fu said that loyalty and the appreciation his customers have for the food at Cheung Sheng are what make it all worthwhile.
“Its a small town,” he said, “and you get to know everybody. That’s what made me want to bring the restaurant back after the fire. All the regular faces came back that night. For me, Cheung Sheng is a matter of family pride, and that carries a long way.”
Cheung Sheng Chinese Restaurant
730 San Benito St., Hollister
(831) 637-8388
Cheung Sheng on DoorDash
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Recommendations for future Eat, Drink, Savor articles can be emailed to roberteliason@benitolink.com.
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