A 45-minute wait for a table on its first day back in business didn’t bother Hunan Lion regulars one bit. After all, they had waited almost two years for a meal at the Chinese restaurant on Columbus’ Northwest Side.
Hunan Lion — shuttered since a kitchen fire at the restaurant at 2038 Crown Plaza Drive off of Bethel Road in the early morning hours of Oct. 4, 2023 — ended its fans’ long wait on Aug. 19. And less than an hour after owners Allyson and Jason Chang and their son, Steven, began a “soft opening” at 4 p.m., the restaurant was packed with people waiting for tables and carryout orders.
“They don’t feel like my customers. They’re my friends,” Jason Chang said.
Kathleen and Thomas Hess, who live a few blocks away off Bethel Road, arrived right at 4 p.m. and got their usual table. Allyson Chang remembered it’s the one they like, just inside the restaurant’s main dining room. Before the couple was seated, they made reservations for Thomas’ 80th birthday in mid-September.
“We come here just about every celebration that we have,” Kathleen Hess said. “We’ve been waiting all day for this.”
As they awaited their spring rolls and took stock of what’s new in the dining room — it was a complete renovation, Jason Chang said — Allyson Chang took another diner to her seat.
“Good to see you, Amy!” she said.
It wasn’t just regulars returning. Steven Chang said about 90% of Hunan Lion’s servers, bartenders, cooks and kitchen staff came back from other jobs they took during the restaurant’s restoration. Jason Chang said he thought everyone was back on board.
“I was looking forward to coming back,” server Shawn Sisouphanh said after bringing a Hunan Combo and moo shoo pork to Dennis Rankin and Wolfgang Salazar, who felt the same way.
“I’ve never had a bad meal here,” Rankin said.
It felt like Christmas, Steven Chang said early in the day. The holidays must have been on others’ minds as well during Hunan Lion’s reopening. One diner reserving his table for the soft-opening asked Allyson Chang if he could also make reservations for December, when dinner at Hunan Lion is a tradition for many in Columbus.
Jason Chang said people started calling for December reservations as soon as the Changs announced their reopening on social media.
Chang said he felt more nervous about his restaurant’s reopening than he did during Hunan Lion’s debut back in 1987. Columbus building officials issued the final permits on Friday, he said. The restaurant restocked and got everything ready for the soft opening in just three days.
But since the fire, Jason Chang said, Hunan Lion regulars have rallied around his family as hurdles with insurers, building owners and others stretched the restaurant’s shutdown to 685 days. (Steven kept track.) He said neighbors even offered to buy gift certificates to help them out financially.
“This time there’s a lot more pressure and more appreciation,” Jason Chang said. “Sometimes it brings tears to my eyes.”
Dining reporter Bob Vitale can be reached at rvitale@dispatch.com or at @dispatchdining on the Instagram social platform.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Hunan Lion is open again, and not a moment too soon for fans of the Columbus restaurant
Reporting by Bob Vitale, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
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