Helen Chen Remembers Her Mother

Ask Lexington resident Helen Chen to share some memories of her mother, the late Cambridge restaurateur Joyce Chen, and stories lovingly flow. So do descriptive words like "courageous, entrepreneurial and forward-thinking."

"My mother was a courageous woman. Speaking very little English, she left China with her family on the last boat out of Shanghai for 30 years. The year was 1949 and I was three years old," said Chen.

The family settled in Cambridge at the suggestion of a cousin who graduated from Harvard University. "Cambridge was a wonderful place to grow up," said Chen. "There weren't a lot of Asian families there at the time, but it had a very cosmopolitan atmosphere."

Chen recalled family life on Alpine Street. "We originally lived in half of a post-World War II duplex with two bedrooms and then moved down the street to a three-bedroom duplex. Both homes had tiny kitchens," Chen said. "It was amazing what my mother could cook – stews, hot pots and home-style Chinese comfort food. She even made her own fermented rice wine using heat from the clothes dryer."

Her skills weren't limited to the kitchen. "She was like Wonder Woman. She knitted and made all our clothes because we were too poor," added Chen.

Chen was 12 in 1958 when her mother opened her first restaurant at 617 Concord Avenue in Fresh Pond. "My parents had become friendly with students from Shanghai, many of whom were studying at MIT. My mother cooked for them on weekends; we played mahjong; and they met their future wives in our home," Chen said.

"They encouraged my parents to open a restaurant because it was difficult to get authentic food from Beijing and Shanghai here," she continued. "The students bankrolled the restaurant and my parents were able to pay them back when they graduated."

Besides owning several restaurants in Cambridge, Joyce Chen also wrote a cookbook, hosted her own television cooking show and created a business called Joyce Chen Products.

"My mother had no formal training; she couldn't afford to graduate from college," said Chen. "She accomplished all these things through shear intelligence, perseverance and sweat.  She was a pioneer in so many ways. After she died, she was inducted posthumously into the James Beard Hall of Fame for her influence in introducing authentic Chinese food to America."

Chen never expected that food would be an important part of her own professional life. "When I look back as a teenager, it was the last thing I expected," she said. "The food business took my mother away. But I always loved the food and I always worked in one of my mother's businesses. As I got older, I became more and more like my mother. I began to enjoy it."

A graduate of Wheaton College with a degree in English literature, Chen ran Joyce Chen Products for many years with her husband, Keith Ohmart, until they sold the business in 2003. Her husband "happily retired," but Chen wasn't ready to take that step and did consulting work for several companies, she said.

When a New Jersey distributor asked her to create a line of Asian cookware, she agreed, and Helen's Asian Kitchen was launched in 2007. Her products include flat-bottom woks (Joyce Chen invented the 12-inch flat-bottom wok), a classic Chinese chef's knife and a bamboo spatula with a curved side that fits on a wok. New products come out about every six months.

Like her mother, Chen is a cookbook author. She has written three to date—Helen Chen's Chinese Home Cooking (1996), Easy Chinese Stir-Fries (2009), and Easy Asian Noodles (2010) – and hopes to write another. She also conducts cooking classes locally and around the country.

Chen eventually would like to write about her mother in some form. For now, she is content to teach, write cookbooks and introduce new products. "Every aspect of my professional life is equally important," she said. "Everything is interrelated."

For information about Chen's products, go to www.helensasiankitchen.com