Wing Look Restaurant

This is a picture of the Wing Look Restaurant in the 1930s. I remember the Wing Look. It was located at the corner of Penang Road and Phee Choon Road, but it closed down in the late 1980s. The restaurant had been operating in this location since the 1920s and so, it had lasted some 60-odd years. The very last time I stepped into the place for a meal, music from the Radio RAAF Butterworth station was blaring from a speaker there. Soon after, it closed down and the shophouse remained empty for a while until it was taken over by a pawnshop.

The Wing Look in the 1980s before it closed

Wing Look was reputedly the first Western-style restaurant managed by the Chinese in Penang. During its prime, the place offered a unique blend of Hainanese Chinese and Western cuisine, featuring specialties like chicken chop, inche kabin and choon piah. To this day, one of my former classmates still waxed lyrical about their special ox tongue stew. And then there were their pièces de résistance: ice-creams and diverse cake selections. The shophouse boasted distinctive features like timber-framed windows, bamboo blinds and cowboy swing doors. Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia's first Prime Minister, considered the Wing Look as among his favourite places to eat. 

The establishment was started by a Hainanese family with excellent culinary skill. Ho Jong Cheng was the second or third-generation proprietor, but he unfortunately passed away at the young age of 36 in 1958. At the time of his death, he also operated the Hotel Metropole in Northam Road and the Chusan Hotel in Tanjong Tokong Road. 

The Metropole once graced one of Penang's significant historical-heritage structures, Asdang House. However, the city emerged from a night of joy and revelry to learn of Asdang House's stealth demolition in the early hours of Christmas in 1993. In a matter of minutes, this heritage building with historical connections to Thailand was reduced to rubble. Within hours, the rubble was carted away before many people were even awake.

Interestingly, when The Old Frees' Association changed restaurant operators in 2016, the successful tender named the establishment the New Wing Look Restaurant, aiming to stir nostalgia among people who still remembered the original name. The restaurant, run by Ho Jong Cheng's son, thrived until 2020, succumbing to the challenges posed by the widespread impact of the Covid-19 pandemic which led to its eventual closure.

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