Timmy Chan's Houston: The Real History Behind the Wings and Fried Rice

Timmy Chan's is one of the few Houston restaurant names that works as shorthand for the city itself — a wing plate on a mountain of fried rice, ordered at a counter, for less than lunch anywhere else costs. The story behind the name is older and stranger than most regulars know, and it does not begin with a man named Timmy Chan.

A 1952 white-tablecloth restaurant on Fannin

The first Timmy Chan's opened in 1952, on the 2300 block of Fannin Street, and it was nothing like the counters that carry the name today. Larry and Lily Chu came to Houston from Canton — now Guangzhou — by way of New York City and the East Coast, and what they opened was a full-service Chinese-American dining room with uniformed waitstaff and white tablecloths, serving prime rib and New England boiled dinners alongside dishes like shrimp with lobster sauce and egg foo young. In 1968 they expanded to 2606 Fannin, adding banquet halls that could seat up to 300.

The name came from a friend. Fook Tim “Timmy” Chan was an educator of Chinese culture and culinary history who had planned to move to Houston with the Chus and backed out at the last minute, staying in New York. The restaurant kept his name anyway.

How the wing plate happened

The fast-casual side of the business came later, when the family opened a location on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard built around cheap, fast, generous plates — a fried drumstick dinner that sold for about $2 and came with enough rice to feed a family. By family account, the fried chicken recipe traced back to Percy “Frenchy” Creuzot Jr. of Frenchy's, with the Chus adding soy sauce and other spices. That combination — Creole-influenced fried chicken over Chinese-American fried rice — is the thing Houston actually means when it says Timmy Chan's.

1982: one name, two families

In 1982 the Chus retired and broke the business up. Larry sold the Fannin dining room to a steakhouse, and the quick-service stores went to two immigrant families who were already working in them: the Dangs, who took the MLK Boulevard store, and the Trans, who bought the one on Richmond.

That split is why the signage is inconsistent across the city, and it is the single most useful thing to know before you go looking for one. Stores in the Tran line trade as Timmy Chan's; stores in the Dang line trade as The Original Timmy Chan. They are separately owned, and there is no central company behind them.

Where to find one

Because each store is individually owned and operated, menus, prices and hours vary from location to location — check the specific store before you drive. A few of the longest-running addresses:

• 13211 Bissonnet St. (at Synott), (281) 988-7998 — Monday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
• 9550 Bissonnet St., near U.S. 59, (713) 772-1457
• 3006 Gears Rd., north Houston, (281) 583-8080
• 6418 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. — The Original Timmy Chan, the store the Dangs took over in 1982
• 5926 Scott St. — Original Timmy Chan Restaurant

What to order

The menu is built on fried chicken and fried rice, and the wing plates are the reason to come. Off the Timmy Chan's menu:

• Garlic wings and buffalo wings — the two orders most people are actually there for
• Six wings with shrimp fried rice, the standard-issue combination
• Cajun shrimp pasta, the clearest expression of the restaurant's Gulf Coast side
• General Tso chicken, beef with broccoli and lo mein on the Chinese-American side

Portions run large and prices run low; that ratio, more than any single dish, is the restaurant's reputation.

Why rappers keep naming it

Timmy Chan's turns up repeatedly in Houston rap. Paul Wall names it in “They Don't Know,” E.S.G. in “Ocean of Funk,” and Lil' Flip with Big HAWK in “Down Souf.” Writer Shea Serrano put the Timmy Chan's wing dinner in his Rap Food Reference Hall of Fame. The references work because the restaurant is genuinely neighborhood infrastructure on Houston's south and southeast sides — the same blocks the music came from — and not because anyone was paid to say the name.

Reading it as Houston food history

What makes Timmy Chan's worth understanding is that it is three Houston stories stacked on one sign: a postwar Chinese immigrant family opening a white-tablecloth room downtown, a Creole fried-chicken recipe crossing over into it, and two later immigrant families — one Chinese, one Vietnamese — buying the business outright in 1982 and keeping it alive for another four decades.

If you want more of that lineage, the restaurants around the MLK and Scott Street stores are covered in our guide to the best restaurants in Third Ward, and the later wave of Asian Houston that grew up along Bellaire Boulevard is in our Chinatown and Asiatown guide. For what else is nearby, see things to do in Third Ward.