It’s been a mainstay of Hartsdale’s “Restaurant Row” on East Hartsdale Avenue since 2007, a Chinese restaurant so popular that you can barely get in on Sunday nights and the holidays – fuhgeddaboutit.
That was, of course, before Covid – and now Hurricane Ida, which flooded the restaurant, requiring a complete renovation of its main dining room and downstairs.
The insurance company has denied the restaurant’s claim and owner Gloria Jeng has yet to hear back from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Small Business Administration (SBA). Her daughters, Jessica and Jennifer, have turned to GoFundMe for help.
The Jeng sisters say, “Our mother has been paying out-of-pocket to fix up the restaurant and get it reopened ASAP. Hunan Village II is a small, family-owned business, so we’re doing our best to chip in and reopen, but the costs have been overwhelming. What keeps my mom going is the positive feedback and encouragement she gets from her customers, who have formed long-term friendships that have made Hunan Village II feel like a home.”
I can personally attest to that. Hunan Village II has become my “office away from the office” on Sunday afternoons for years. Indeed, I would never have published five novels, three short stories, two art catalog essays – to say nothing of my WAG work – without Gloria Jeng’s food and the company of her family and staff to keep me going as I wrote at a back table in the restaurant. Gloria herself has become one of my dearest friends, a woman who has been there for me in sickness and in the darkest days of my caring for my beloved Aunt Mary as she was dying.
Now it’s my turn – and that of others – to help her. As the song says, “that’s what friends are for.”
Anyway, the food’s too fabulous not to have Hunan Village II back.
For more, contact Hunan Village II, 222 E. Hartsdale Ave. at 914-472-3838 or at hunanvillage2.com. The GoFundMe link is here.
