Wallace Lai Tse-fung remembers being sent by his parents as a child to buy noodle soup from pushcarts, which were once ubiquitous in Hong Kong. The soup and disposable chopsticks would be put together in a plastic bag. Sometimes the chopsticks would poke a hole in the bag and soup would drip out onto his clothes. The memory makes him smile.
'My dad was a traffic cop and my mum was a homemaker. I have a brother and a sister, and we lived in a very small police dormitory [in Western]. We didn't have much money to dine out and the noodle soup was quite a treat,' says Lai, 32, who runs three noodle bars in New York's Chinatown.
Called Hong Kong Station, the chain takes its cues from the street vendors Lai visited in his youth, serving pre-prepared produce, such as beef stew, fish balls and vegetables, and many types of noodle, which are cooked in front of the customer. For New York's Hong Kong immigrants, it is comfort food that reminds them of home - and at only US$5 or US$6 a bowl, it is comfort that can be enjoyed often.
For Lai, who decamped to the United States in the summer of 2003 with only US$20 in his pocket, success has been dramatic. In Hong Kong, he had applied his entrepreneurial talents in various fields, from insurance to graphic design. He had ups and downs but it was the Sars epidemic, in 2003, that almost broke him.
'I had just invested in a doughnut shop in Shenzhen; the machines had been purchased and the lease had been signed. Then 'bang', no business. I lost all my money - HK$500,000. It was the lowest point of my life,' says Lai.
When he married his long-term girlfriend in New York (she was working in the US city for an insurance company), he couldn't even afford a wedding banquet - but he could see an opportunity.