Kim Lai, the immigrant businessman who helped transform a small family-ran establishment into one of the most widely recognized Vietnamese restaurants in the Washington, D.C. area, died on Feb. 16. He was 77 by the Gregorian calendar, but 78 by a Vietnamese custom that celebrates everyone’s birthday during the Lunar New Year.
Lai died from a head injury, several hours after suffering a fall at home in Fairfax, Va., his second-oldest daughter, Le Lai, told The Washington Post.
Lai and his wife, Thanh Tran, opened their first restaurant, Huong Que, in 1993 in a cursed corner of Eden Center, the Falls Church, Va., shopping center dedicated to Vietnamese food and culture. Several businesses had come and gone from the space, a parade of failures that led some at the center to dub it the “bad-luck place.”
The Lai family would break the spell. The attraction was Tran’s menu, an extensive survey of Vietnamese home-style cooking, including pho, hot pots, papaya salad, spring rolls, steamed rice crepes and dozens of other dishes. If Tran was the restaurant’s star in the kitchen, Lai was the conductor in the dining room. He was a consummate host in those early, make-or-break days, remembers Le Lai. Nothing escaped his attention. In days before smartphones, he watched over every diner, even the solo ones, who can be easily ignored in a dining room with larger, more profitable parties.
“If you are American, he’ll bring you The Post,” Le Lai recalled. “If you are Vietnamese, he’ll bring you a Vietnamese newspaper, so you never feel like you’re alone.”
Huong Que translates to a “taste of home” in English, said Lieu Lai-Williams, the couple’s youngest daughter. And that’s exactly what the restaurant was for many Vietnamese immigrants: a chance to experience the flavors of a homeland that millions had to flee after Saigon fell to communist forces in 1975. Lines formed outside the door at Huong Que, which persuaded Eden Center management in 1997 to offer the Lai family a more spacious, more coveted location facing the sprawling parking lot at the shopping center.
The restaurant might have remained a treasure known only to the Vietnamese community if not for a December 1997 review from Phyllis C. Richman, then food critic for The Washington Post. Richman recommended a number of dishes, but she raved about the service. “These waitresses are the greatest asset of Huong Que,” the critic wrote. “They orchestrate your meal, show you how to wrap and what to dip among the plates of meats and seafood, lettuce and fresh herbs.”
Three of the servers featured in a photo that accompanied Richman’s review were Lai and Tran’s daughters. Their fourth daughter, Lieu, was then too young to work the dining room floor, but she would soon join her siblings. Together, the sisters would become the faces of Huong Que, relegating their father to other front-of-the-house duties, including cashier.
Richman’s review expanded Huong Que’s reach. It also led to a name change — or more of a name addition. The Lai family supplemented Huong Que with a secondary, English-language handle, so that its new Western fans wouldn’t fumble the pronunciation. Starting around 1998, the restaurant became known as Huong Que/Four Sisters, an acknowledgment of the four daughters’ growing visibility within the four walls of the establishment.
Huong Que/Four Sisters also started making regular appearances on best of lists by The Post, Washingtonian magazine and other publications, arguably the city’s first Vietnamese restaurant to gain mainstream status in the D.C. region. Local chefs began to make trips to Eden Center to eat at the restaurant, including Patrick O’Connell, the founder and proprietor of the three Michelin-starred Inn at Little Washington.
“It’s a great American success story,” O’Connell said last year about the restaurant’s rise.
Lai was born in 1946 in Bien Hoa, just outside Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon. His father was Chinese and his mother Vietnamese. Lai’s first aspiration was to become a professional soccer player. He was talented enough to “represent Bien Hoa in Vietnam Football Federation competitions,” according to his obituary. But Lai was also entrepreneurial by nature. He had started a motorcycle parts business in Bien Hoa, which he abandoned when he and the family decided to uproot and move to the United States.
Lai, Tran and their six children landed in Northern Virginia in 1982, carrying two black trash bags, which represented all their worldly possessions. They had little grasp of the English language and few marketable skills. Both Lai and Tran worked two jobs each to make ends meet. Lai worked at a Krispy Kreme and as a dishwasher at a Hilton hotel in Washington. Both parents labored so long and hard they were barely a presence in their children’s lives. Child care often fell on the eldest daughter, Ly Lai.
“Literally, I never saw my parents as a kid,” oldest son Hoa told Washington City Paper in 2006. “My sister’s the one who raised us. Not that I’m saying my parents weren’t there all the time.”
But Lai and Tran earned enough money to buy an old food truck, which they used to sell hot dogs and other convenience foods on the National Mall. It was the family’s first taste of running their own business in the United States, and it would eventually lead to the opening of Huong Que.
Over the years, all six of Lai and Tran’s children worked at Huong Que/Four Sisters or the family’s Vietnamese deli, Song Que, which debuted in the early 2000s in Eden Center. (The deli closed in 2014.) Two daughters, Le and Lieu, stuck it out to the very end. They were the co-owners of Four Sisters in Merrifield, where the family relocated the original restaurant in 2008 and ditched the Vietnamese part of the business name.
Four Sisters closed last year on Mother’s Day after an almost 30-year run. Lai and Tran had a hard time accepting the closure at first, Lieu told The Post. “Their hearts are broken,” she said. “But in their minds, they understand.”
Lai and Tran officially retired in 2014. After working so many years, the couple spent their retirement traveling the world, including trips back to their home country.
Some of Lai and Tran’s children splintered off from the family business to start their own restaurants. Ly Lai and her husband, Sly Liao, launched their own place in Merrifield, Sea Pearl, which is now closed. Hoa Lai and his wife, Joyce, debuted the casual Four Sisters Grill in 2014 in Arlington, which is now run by Ly and her spouse. Youngest son Thuan Lai and his wife, Angela, opened 4 Sisters Asian Snack Bar in 2018. LoAnn Lai runs her own salon in Georgetown.
Lai is survived by his wife of 64 years and all six of his children, their spouses and eight grandchildren. He is survived by none of the restaurants or the deli that made his name.
