How a Restaurant Family Celebrates Chinese New Year

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Photograph by Lenne Chai, Prop Styling by Samantha Margherita, Food Styling by Maya Bookbinder

Editor's Note: After reporting concluded for this story, Rica Leon and John Liu lost their home in the January 2025 Southern California wildfires. You can support the Chifa family by visiting their namesake restaurant and its sister establishment Arroz & Fun. Head to this list of resources for more ways to help those affected by the Los Angeles fires.

On the eve of Chinese New Year, for some families it is tradition to return to the matriarch’s home for a feast. When hospitality runs in your blood, as it does for the Leons, that means everyone reunites at Chifa, their Chino Latino restaurant in Los Angeles. It has become the beating heart of their lives—a story that began with one woman 50 years ago in Lima, Peru.

The South American term chifa encompasses both a style of cuisine and restaurant introduced by Chinese immigrants, fusing Cantonese and Peruvian flavors. It’s also the name of Wendy Leon’s first restaurant, established in 1975 with her Chinese Peruvian husband, Ricardo José Leon. Chifa (1.0, we’ll call it) looked wholly unique compared to its neighboring counterparts in Lima at the time, adorned with traditional Chinese vegetable paintings, big round Formica tables, and a custom-built arched entrance, a nod to Chinese architecture.

“I cooked my home specialty, and that’s why people came to eat,” Wendy remembers fondly. This included dishes from Tongshan in China’s Hubei Province, north of Guangdong, such as chickens poached in an inky mother soy sauce and spareribs tossed in a garlic-ginger glaze.

Business boomed at Chifa 1.0. Customers called ahead to make reservations without seeing the menu. But after a couple of years, an opportunity arose for Wendy and Ricardo to immigrate to America with their three children, Ricardina, Josefina, and Humberto. The offer was too good to pass up, so they left the restaurant and Lima behind in 1977, with $3,000 to their name.

The Leon family relocated to Los Angeles, where Ricardo managed Chinese American restaurants while Wendy worked in garment factories and cafeterias. At home their children devoured Wendy’s Tongshan specialities, along with Peruvian ceviches, alfajores, lomo saltado, and wok-fried Cantonese dishes she’d learned from her parents and grandmother.

Over the next decade the Leon family expanded and the kids moved out and away, yet food continued to anchor them in their many boisterous reunions. Humberto went on to found cult fashion brand Opening Ceremony in New York. Ricardina met her husband, John Liu, while working at an investment firm, and after they got married, John became the family cook. He watched Wendy in the kitchen during big gatherings, taking notes in his journal. Eventually, John and Wendy joined forces, prepping the feasts together. They even took these meals on the road. While Humberto helmed high-fashion brand Kenzo as creative director, he longed for food from his childhood. So he invited his whole family to cook for his colleagues. They took over restaurants in Paris and Tokyo and fired up Chinese Peruvian banquets, all executed by Wendy and John.

The duo catered a particularly pivotal event in 2017—a Kenzo film premiere with a thousand guests. After crushing another dinner service, it suddenly dawned on John: What he and Wendy were doing felt a lot like running a restaurant.

The next year Ricardina, John, and Humberto decided to revive Wendy’s old restaurant. Chifa 2.0 would serve Wendy’s Tongshan, Cantonese, and Chinese Peruvian dishes alongside the Taiwanese classics John grew up savoring, all against the backdrop of Humberto’s whimsical design aesthetic. Ricardina, who has a real estate background, began looking into spaces.

But when they shared the news with Wendy, the Leon matriarch didn’t mince her words. Running a restaurant was hard work, she warned: “I could not wish this on my worst enemy.”

The trio pursued their plan anyway, powered by an almost existential preoccupation of what might happen if they didn’t keep cooking. “We realized, Wow, in one generation we could lose our cultural food,” Ricardina says. “That’s why we did this, to keep our culture alive.”

Chifa 2.0 opened in November 2020, and it was all hands on deck. John and Wendy spearheaded the menu. Ricardina and Humberto took orders and ferried dishes to guests. John and Ricardina’s children—Jarod (27 years old), Coltrane (22), and Cristovo (21)—hopped on the line, bussed tables, and began to understand their family’s history in a new light.

Today Chifa is a little over four years old, and all three generations of Leons are involved in some way. Wendy is always on soup duty, letting the weather dictate what she’s making: pork ribs and lily flowers on cold winter days, chicken broth with walnuts and Chinese almonds in the spring. John is on the line, while Ricardina handles operations. Aside from design, Humberto also plans events for the restaurant. (Josefina is a regular and overall cheerleader.) The grandchildren have stepped into leadership roles of their own, working at sister restaurant Arroz & Fun and new cocktail bar Damn, I Miss Paris. And while they may see each other often, rarely does that happen when everyone is off the clock.

That’s why events like Chinese New Year are essential. It’s one of the few instances when everyone is free, but it’s also an opportunity to honor where everything started for this growing restaurant family: Wendy’s cooking. Hosting these huge annual dinner parties also doubles as Chifa menu R&D. “You get to test out what a hundred people think,” Humberto says. “And the good thing about cooking for family is that they will not hold back.”

A week out from the holiday, Wendy and John begin mapping out the menu, brainstorming 10 or so dishes. They’ll inevitably add five more dishes inspired by the ingredients they encounter at the market. On the day of, “we invite everyone in a very Latin Chinese way,” Ricardina says, laughing. That means 50 to 60 family members, neighbors, Chifa employees, friends, and friends of friends are all welcome. Everyone pitches in, with the kids making dumplings and Humberto bringing dessert, such as sesame tong yuan or sweet red bean soup. Money-filled red envelopes, lai see, are exchanged, and one table is set aside for mah-jongg, where you’ll often hear Ricardina yelping in victory.

The long buffet table teems with plates of long noodles for longevity, steamed whole fish for prosperity, Wendy’s braised chicken and lomo saltado, and John’s whims, which could be beet lo bak go (turnip cakes) or his three-day Taiwanese beef noodle soup. Wendy saves the fish cheeks, the most tender and prized part, for her grandchildren.

Looking around, the Leon matriarch is quietly pleased. While she was initially against Chifa 2.0, she sees how it isn’t an exact replica of her first venture, but rather a continuation of what she started: broadening the borders of Chinese food to reflect the family’s lived experiences. It is a reminder of the sweetness of reunion and of what she has built—a legacy from Lima to Los Angeles.

“I’m so proud,” Wendy says. “My family, John’s family. We put it all together.”

Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit

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