Joyce Chen

Joyce Chen, née Liao, Chinese name Liao Jia-ai (;

Starting in 1958, she operated several popular Chinese restaurants in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Chen was diagnosed with dementia in 1985, and died in 1994. Her accomplishments and influence on American cuisine were honored by the US Postal Service and by the city of Cambridge.

Early life Joyce Chen was born in Beijing, the youngest of nine children of a high-ranking Qing dynasty official, during the Republican era under Sun Yat-sen. Her wealthy father, a railroad administrator and city executive, could afford to hire a family cook. In her book, Joyce Chen Cook Book, she said that she grew up with a family chef who left to cook for her father's friend, "Uncle Li", who became the Chinese ambassador to Russia. At that point, her mother and her governess cooked the family meals, and Joyce watched and learned from them.

Thomas Chen worked as an importer of fine art, while Joyce was a housewife raising two children, a dramatic change from her job in China as an insurance broker (an uncommon vocation for women in China at that time). She gave birth to another son, Stephen, in 1952. In 1957, she first thought that her cooking might be popular when she made pumpkin cookies and Chinese egg rolls for a bake sale fundraiser at the Buckingham School in Cambridge. She was surprised to hear that her then-unfamiliar Chinese snacks had sold out within an hour, and she was encouraged to make more. Chen had already become adept at finding or substituting hard-to-get ingredients, and adapting her recipes to American tastes. She promoted healthy Chinese cooking and refused to use Red Dye No. 2 and other food coloring at her restaurants. For Chinese-speaking and English-speaking staff and customers to communicate more easily, Chen introduced the practice of numbering menu items. The first restaurant operated for thirteen years, closing in 1971. In 1969, members of Bolt, Beranek and Newman's IMP team ate at Chen's restaurant, which was located next door to BBN, when they were working on the first IMPs to create the ARPANET.

After her divorce in 1966, Chen sold the original restaurant to her ex-husband, who converted it in 1972 to a Japanese eatery called Osaka. It operated for 21 years and closed in 1988.

In 1969, Chen opened her third restaurant, a much larger space seating 500 people, in an existing building located at 500 Memorial Drive in Cambridge. This restaurant, also called Joyce Chen Restaurant, benefited from its proximity to MIT and Harvard. However, the restaurant closed in 1974 when the building was demolished so that the MIT dorms New House, and later, Next House, could be built on the site. New House was jokingly known by MIT students as the "Joyce Chen Small Living Place" for a time.

In 1973, Chen opened her fourth restaurant in an elegant Modernist custom-designed building at 390 Rindge Avenue, near Fresh Pond. The building, designed by Alan Ahakian, was described as "marvelously secluded behind a baffled garden wall that focuses around a single tree". The restaurant, also called Joyce Chen Restaurant, seated 263. It operated for 25 years and closed in 1998.

In 1975, Chen's eldest son, Henry, opened a fifth Joyce Chen Restaurant on Cape Cod, but it closed after a year and a half. Boston cardiologist Paul Dudley White wrote the foreword to her book, and praised her use of healthier ingredients. Twenty-six episodes were filmed on the same set as The French Chef (featuring Julia Child) in the studios of WGBH in Boston. The two programs were both produced by Ruth Lockwood, and the basic studio kitchen setup was superficially redecorated in an "oriental" motif. Chen was not a rigid purist, sometimes discussing what kinds of readily-available American ingredients could be substituted for hard-to-find Chinese ingredients. However, the pilot season failed to gain a funding sponsor, and was discontinued after its initial run of 26 episodes.

Chen suffered a serious injury to her right hand in 1976, when she dropped a large glass jar that contained her stir fry sauce. She underwent four to five hours of microsurgery, but never fully recovered the use of her right hand. She was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Posthumously in 1998, Chen's contributions to cuisine were described in Beard House, The Magazine of the James Beard Foundation. In September 2012, the city of Cambridge held their first "Festival of Dumplings" in Central Square to honor what would have been Chen's 95th birthday. There have since been dumpling festivals in 2013 and 2014. The New York Historical Society exhibit, Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion (September 26, 2014 - April 19, 2015) reviewed the history of the Chinese in America, featuring Chen's contributions.

Celebrity chef Ming Tsai later said of Chen, "She is the Chinese Julia Child [...] Joyce Chen helped elevate what Chinese food was about. She didn't dumb it down. She opened people's eyes to what good Chinese could taste like."

On September 5, 2017, nine days before what would have been Chen's 100th birthday, an illustrated children's book about her life, Dumpling Dreams: How Joyce Chen Brought the Dumpling from Beijing to Cambridge, written by Carrie Clickard and illustrated by Katy Wu, was published.

Business legacy Chen was diagnosed with dementia in 1985, and immediately retired. She was succeeded by daughter Helen Chen, herself a chef and cookbook author, as chief executive officer of the company, Joyce Chen Inc. Youngest son Stephen became in charge of running the restaurant operations, while Helen concentrated on managing the specialty foods and cookware businesses.

Following their mother's death in 1994, Stephen continued to run the restaurant business. However, in 1998 the restaurant at 390 Rindge Avenue closed, thus ending the 40-year run of the Joyce Chen Restaurant chain altogether.

After the restaurant business ceased operations, Helen continued to run Joyce Chen Products, but in January 2003 she sold the business to Columbian Home Products in order to provide the company with additional capital. Helen has since written and published three cookbooks of her own, and in 2007 she developed her own line of cookware for Harold Import Company (Lakewood, New Jersey), under a new banner "Helen's Asian Kitchen". Helen has also taught cooking at Boston University. Prior to the closure, Columbian had sold the three brands to Honey-Can-Do, and the "Granite-Ware" brand to . "Snow River Products", another former brand of Columbian Home Products, was spun off as a stand-alone company, and transitioned to a custom wood products business and away from selling to retailers.

, Stephen is president of Joyce Chen Foods, Inc., which sells food products inspired by his mother's recipes, including Asian sauces, oils, condiments, and spices. Over time, the line has been expanded to include gluten-free, certified kosher, and lower-sodium foods, none of which have added MSG content. In 2006, after countless requests from former restaurant customers, the line was also expanded to include frozen potstickers.

Eldest son Henry and his wife Barbara (née Castagnoli) owned and managed Joyce Chen Unlimited, a retail store in Acton, Massachusetts, which closed in March 2008, five months after his death.

In March 2023, the Joyce Chen brand was acquired by kitchen scale manufacture Escali.