Mumbai: Tulun Terence Chen, owner of the iconic Chinese restaurant Kamling who passed away on June 8, was buried on Friday. The restaurateur was 77 years old.
Kamling, the iconic restaurant in Churchgate, which opened in the 1930s, became Chen’s restaurant by serendipity.
The story goes that Chen, the son of a renowned Mumbai dentist, happened to see an elderly Chinese man get knocked down by a cab somewhere near Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus Station. Chen rushed the injured man to a hospital and, after he had healed, Chen learned that the man was Tham Monyin, owner of Kamling restaurant. Monyin at the time — this happened in 1967, when India and China were at war — was trying to find a way to move to Hong Kong, according to a report in The Indian Quarterly. Chen, who was then a teenager, rallied his friends and raised a few thousand rupees to help the beleaguered restaurateur out. About a year after the man’s departure, Chen received a letter from a lawyer’s office in Hong Kong informing him of the demise of the gentleman and of the fact that he had left Kamling to Chen in his will.
Chen’s father suggested that he partner with the Thams who owned the Mandarin restaurant in Colaba. Kamling was thus re-opened by the two families in the 1960s and together, they built it into an iconic restaurant. Henry Tham, the patriarch of the family, passed away last October; his sons Ryan and Keenen continue to run a range of famous restaurants in the city.
Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, Kamling’s ethnic interiors — tasselled lanterns, bamboo paintings and Shou-symbol frieze — were as familiar to city folk as its sounds and scents.
“I remember enjoying more than a few Sunday lunches there with friends,” said Cuffe-Parade resident, Chandru Daswani, who grew up in a building next to Kamling and remembers the aroma of the food surrounding his games of gully cricket. “Everyone had their favourite dishes at Kamling because they’d visit it so often,” Daswani said, adding that it was near impossible to get a table at lunchtime even on a weekday.
The buzz died down over the decades and the menu changed slightly, but even a couple of years before it shuttered in 2019, the place had its regulars. It remained the city’s quintessential family restaurant —large joint families enjoyed their weekend outing there till the very end.
For many, the must-have dishes included the Chow Mein, dumplings and the roasted pork noodle soup. Other hot favourites included the staples: sweet corn soup, spring rolls and wontons and the signature Peking Fish.
“The food was authentic, unlike the Indo-Chinese dishes at other Chinese restaurants in Bombay,” said businessman Jayant Sanghvi, 66.
Restaurateur-chef Nitin Mongia’s family was one of those that frequented the property in the 1980. “[The owners] were usually around, keeping an eye on things,” Mongia said. Chen’s brother, Hsinchu, also managed the place in the 1980s.
After Kamling shut down, it was revamped and transformed into Foo, an Asian tapas bar that is run by the Tham brothers. The next generation of Chens are partners.