Diced Ham Fried Rice

Capitol Cafe and Lounge

420 South Main Street
Aberdeen, South Dakota

1939 – 1965

Howard Wong was born in Canton, China, in 1912 and came to the United States with his father, Sig Hong, when he was 12 years old. Sig Hong died just six months after that, and Wong was taken in by a family in Fargo, North Dakota. Later he moved in with cousins in Jamestown, North Dakota, where he learned to cook at the family’s restaurant.

In the 1930s Wong moved to Chicago, where he continued to cook. Somewhere along the way became a pilot, and he recruited other Chinese pilots to return to China and teach flying. After working in Minneapolis and Hutchinson, Minnesota, he returned to North Dakota to become the manager of the American Cafe in Fargo. In 1936 Wong met his wife, Beulah, and the couple moved to LaMoure, where he opened his first Chinese restaurant.

In 1939 Wong and his wife moved to Aberdeen, South Dakota, where he opened the Capitol Cafe and Lounge. Its location on Main Street, just a block and a half north of the intersection of U.S. Highways 12 and 81, provided a steady stream of customers from morning to night, and the place offered something for everyone. “Truly the upper Midwest’s finest cafe and cocktail lounge,” an early postcard said, promising “a selection of tasty Chinese dishes” and “choice cuts of steak or sea food prepared to your liking,” as well as “a lift from a refreshing highball.”

Sometime in the early 1960s Wong decided that he wanted to build a larger place so that his two sons could become a part of the business. So in 1965 he closed the Capitol Cafe, disposed of its equipment and furnishings in a liquidation sale, and moved to Bloomington, Minnesota, where the following year, at a total cost of $600,000 he opened Howard Wong’s on a then-barren stretch of Interstate Highway 494. When Wong decided to retire in 1984, he sold the restaurant to Franklin Lee, the owner of the Mandarin Yen, a popular Chinese restaurant in Golden Valley, Minnesota, who renamed it Mandarin Yen South. Wong died in 1993 at age 81.

Print Recipe

Diced Ham Fried Rice

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Fried rice has long been one of the standbys of Chinese-American restaurant cooking, as culinary historian Sylvia Lovegren notes in Fashionable Foods: Seven Decades of Food Fads (University of Chicago Press, 2005). This version of the dish was one of the most popular menu items for some 25 years at Howard Wong's Capitol Cafe in Aberdeen, South Dakota.

Ingredients

4 tablespoons vegetable or canola oil
1 teaspoon salt
Dash of white pepper
2 eggs
1 pound diced smoked ham
1/2 cup fresh button mushrooms, thinly sliced
4 scallions, finely chopped
1 cup fresh bean sprouts
6 cups cold boiled rice
1 teaspoon monosodium glutamate (MSG)
2 tablespoons soy sauce

Instructions

Put the oil, salt, and pepper in a preheated 12-inch skillet. When the oil begins to shimmer, add the eggs and scramble until firm.

Add the ham, mushrooms, scallions, and bean sprouts to the skillet and stir-fry over high heat for about 3 minutes. Blend in rice and stir-fry another 3 minutes.

Dissolve the MSG in the soy sauce and add the mixture to the skillet; stir fried rice thoroughly and serve.