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Today is June 8, 2020. And we invited back our Houston Asian American Archive's participant, Terry Wong, who is the owner and front of the house manager, of our favorite—everyone's favorite, I

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guess— barbecue, Asian fusion barbecue restaurant in Bellaire, the "Blood Bros BBQ". So thank you so much. And my name is Ann Shi. We would like to start by asking you about how the restaurant,

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how you're doing? And how the rest of your life has been impacted during the pandemic? You kind of broke up there at the end. What did you say? Oh, I was just saying could you start by telling us

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how the pandemic has impacted the restaurant and your life? Okay, yeah, definitely. Um, well, you know, for first of all, we're speaking for us, we’re we're

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luckier than the majority of most restaurants I think. From the beginning of the COVID, the first initial month was very slow, just like everybody else. I would probably venture to say maybe 30% are hovering

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around there. And then I would say it kind of slowly got better. Till to about close to 50% until I would say, the last week or so. And now we're hovering probably closer to around 60%.

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Now, so you know, I mean, it's, it's not obviously, it's not like it was before the pandemic; but uh, you know, speaking for from the restaurant industry, you know, as you know, tons of places had to close down.

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Or they're still closed and literally just opened May 1st, because you know, because of the— allowing with the dine-in at 25% and then 50%. So, you know, we're just blessed that we were

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that we were able to stay open, you know, even if it was just doing the takeout, check-out only model. So we're lucky. Yea, and our last interview was right before the pandemic unraveled, and you're talking

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about the rumors, causing the businesses to significantly drop at that time already, and you started eating out more than ever in Chinatown.

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Can you share some of the— including this one— some of the other initiatives that you have been taking to support Chinatown's businesses? Um, well, you know, initially when when the, when the pandemic started, I had an

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idea that I was going to make a print guide, sort of. And not just Chinatown, I was going to make a print guide of basically all the Asian restaurants all over Houston.

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Obviously, that's a huge undertaking, obviously, because there's probably, you know, thousands of restaurants I'm assuming across the city. But, you know, I have a good close group of my

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close friends that are helping me with the, you know, the effort. Obviously, I can't do it all by myself. But we kind of decided that that would be too difficult to do. The reason being is the constant changing, and you

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know, restaurants schedules, obviously, their hours. So we thought that that would be impossible to do, and it would probably be more confusing for people than-than help because of that.

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So we decided not to do that. And then I, myself with my friends decided that it would be a better idea to try the whole Facebook social media thing; the "Chow Down in Chinatown" thing; so where we can do it, you know,

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together on a daily basis; where we get to interact with not only not only the business owner, but– but even even the customer that goes somewhere.

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They'll– they'll– they'll post it on our group and relay it back to us. "Oh, you know, I went to such and such place, they're open now; or they're not open now. Or they have this on special", you know, because of the damage.

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So that's– that's helped immensely. And it's pretty gratifying where we, we've seen, we've seen it help quite a few businesses out there. Because as you know, there's a– there's a lot of mom and pop Asian places, you know

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where, where there's a language barrier, you know. Their menus aren't in English, or their English is limited, so they can't answer the phone; they can't answer your questions. So, you know, the- being able to interact with

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them, and post, you know, their information on on social media help, helps them greatly. Whereas before they couldn't, they had no way to communicate with, you know, people that can't speak Vietnamese or

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speak Chinese or, you know, so it's worked out well, worked out well. So far, so far. Great! Yeah, I remember seeing on your social media that you and the restaurant has also taken part

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in supporting the medical workers by providing food for their teams in the hospital. Yeah, yeah. We, we've been pretty lucky with that too.

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We have quite a few of our personal friends that are in healthcare and our, and our customers. And, again, we're super lucky. We have, we have, we're

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blessed to have some really amazing friends that not only donated money; same thing with our customers here. And you know, we didn't even ask them, they– they asked us. You know, "hey, we want to help. We

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want to donate money, you know that we want to remain anonymous." You know, "here's," you know, "1000 bucks", you know, "here's 500 bucks", "here's 200 bucks", "100 bucks" here and there. You know, we will we want to feed, you know, frontline workers.

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So that's what we did. Simple. Yeah. Yeah. And how about the impacts of the restaurant menus? Did you have to take off any of the items

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because we heard there was a supply chain disruption on the... Yeah, there is. Definitely. So beef is the most affected right now.

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Specifically brisket. So a lot of places, uh you know can't get as much beef. Us we're lucky you know.

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We felt the effects of the shortage of the beef a little bit on the brisket; but it's not too bad. So we just had to lower our bars on a daily basis. So we don't have quite as much brisket on a daily basis; but we do have it every every

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day, just not as much. So we had you know, that was our way of dealing with it right now, currently. So we just have to

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tell the customers if you want brisket, you got to get here early. So it's so far, it's been okay. And you know, we– we upped the bars we increase the bars on, on, on non-beef items.

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Like we have more, we have more pork now we have pulled pork, more chicken, more turkey. More, more non-barbecue items, like we're doing beef cheek tacos, pulled pork

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tacos and some sandwiches. Yeah, they're gonna help avoid you know the shortage of brisket and this worked so far— we've been lucky.

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And how about the staff —like did you happen to have to let anyone go in your— among your employees? No, amazingly you know— knock on wood— you know because it's still going on. But amazingly

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we have all the same staff. the only, the only staff member that we had to cut the hours obviously was our, was our busgirl, because there's nothing to bus with no dining room. So she was the only employee that

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obviously had to take a huge, you know, cut in hours. But you know, we still have our, we still do all this. We still had her on every day. We would, you know, have her come help the last three hours of

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service every day to help clean up. So she was still able to have you know, three hours a day, which is better than zero hours a day. So, so not too bad. How about the...?

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Yeah. Go ahead. I was just asking how about the management of the restaurant? Like did you have to

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—like the— take like much differences in the protocols you run the restaurant? Yeah. We we actually decided not to even open the dining room

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basically literally until this past Saturday. We just did that. We just did the takeout only. We opened up the patio, four tables on the patio,

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probably for two weeks now. But, but again, no dine-in's— zero, until this past, this past Saturday. So we've only actually had dine-in two days.

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That's it. And we're not opening, you know, the whole thing, just, just six booths. That's it. Yeah, six booths

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and then four tables outside. And we're going to kind of roll with that for now. We'll see, we'll see. You know what the city officials say, in the next

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week. Maybe we'll open up for more, you know, before Father's Day, something like that. Play it by ear. Yeah. Also, the pandemic, some impacts on people having to stay in more.

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I'm not sure if that's the same case for you. But given people are staying in more, do you happen to feel closer or otherwise, to your family or friends during this difficult time?

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Have your relationship with your loved ones, or family and friends changed since the lockdown? Oh, yeah, that's been super difficult. Yeah. You know, me personally,

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probably a little bit guilty, just– just because we're– we're tired of, you know, not being able to see family, especially our parents. So probably– probably not being as strict on ourselves as

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we should, as we were in the beginning. Like me for example, I think I've seen my– my– my parents a couple of times a week now; whereas before, I mean, it didn't see them for like a month besides sometimes talking to them on the

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phone. But you know, it's not– it's not like we're, you know, in each other's face. And you know, we're not, you know, we're not really hugging or anything like that.

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But, you know, we're in the same room, per se. Yeah. How about your colleagues? Like, did you happen to be closer because you have to depend on each other more than before? Oh, definitely, definitely we depend on each other more.

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I mean, you know, I can't speak for everybody but me myself. I mean, yeah, if I didn't have if I didn't have a, you know, friends colleagues talk to, probably go crazy.

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Because, you know, that just speaking for myself, you know, for us at the restaurant, I mean, it's just, it's so much more stressful. You know, you're talking, you know, five times more work, you know, for less money.

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You know what I mean? Less sales. So it weighs on everybody. And, yeah, we're looking forward to a vacation. The whole staff needs it for sure.

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For sure. And how about the hygiene and sanitation protocols? Are you guys taking some additional steps to ensure the safety of the customer? Yeah, we do.

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How we operate over here as you know, everybody wears masks and gloves. Everybody washes their hands. I mean, everybody in the restaurant biz anyway, pandemic or no pandemic. You wash your hands a billion times a day.

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And then now it's even, you know, tenfold whenever, you know, whenever we have to take your gloves off. So yeah, everybody stays mask– mask'd up and gloved up over here.

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We, we basically spray down the entire dining area and cash– cashier area where you get your food, we spray it down multiple times with the hospital grade disinfectant too.

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We do that every day, probably three, four times a day. It's great to hear. Thank you. And also, I was just wondering, at the

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beginning of the pandemic we had, including the rumors about Chinatown, like we found a lot of targeted racism like people vandalizing Chinese restaurants, or Asian restaurants in general.

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And, and like, yelling, like very bad racial slurs, targeted at Asians. Have you personally experienced anything similar to that? No, fortunately, I haven't.

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You know, and unfortunately, I have friends and colleagues that have experienced it. You know, which is too bad. You know, it's unfortunate, you know, it's 2020. But, uh, us personally, here at the restaurant, me, my family,

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our staff, you know, our, our Asian staff that we have here, haven't had any. But yeah, I definitely have heard— I'm not gonna say a lot— but I've definitely,

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definitely heard of, you know, situations—slurs, nothing, nothing physical. I haven't heard. I don't think I've heard any physical altercations,

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racial altercations. Just all verbal stuff. So. So turning on to the kind of more future aspects, do

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you think this pandemic has changed any of your future plans or any your future prospects, perspectives about like how your life should be in the future? Uh, yeah, for sure.

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You know, it's– it's kind of hard to– hard to avoid at this point, you know? I think– I think like it or not, I mean, obviously, hygiene, you're just more self-conscious. You know. I've

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always showered twice a day so it's not that huge of a big deal. But since the pandemic, I pretty much shower immediately when I get home; instead of before, you know I would get home, sit around, and then

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I don't take a shower until before I go to bed. But now with the pandemic, I shower, like literally when I walk in the door, you know, so you're– so you're not, you know, contaminating anything unnecessarily.

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Um, yeah, I feel like, I– I seriously feel like I wash my hands 1000 times a day. Like my hands are so smooth now, because all the handwashing.

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I mean, as far as business-wise, little little things like condiment station, you know, being able to put– put barbecue sauce on their table, you know, we don't, we don't do that anymore, because of

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the situation. So have to basically hand pack, you know, all the sauces, all the pickles, all the onions, all the jalapenos, and then both, you know, sauces; can't put napkins down on the table anymore, there's,

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you know, the– the customer can get their own napkins. So stuff like that, you know, it seems a little, but uh, yeah, it's just little tedious things that you got to kind of remember. And you know, if that has to be from now on, it has

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to be from now on. You know, if it changes back to semi normal, that would be nice. That's wishful thinking at this point. Yeah. Um, how about the habits of your customers since

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everyone's doing more like eating on the patio and curbside pickups? Do you see like their habits will change for good? Their habits?

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Yeah, definitely. Like for example, during– during the, during the pandemic, we actually started taking phone orders, which we never did that before. And that's because, you know, there

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wasn't no business to be quite frank. I mean, there's no lines anymore. You know, we went from having a line literally, every day before we open to no

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lines, like zero. So, we started taking phone orders, and that helped, you know, that helped greatly. So we actually didn't start getting any kind of lines at the

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restaurant, until probably last weekend. So it's it's not like pre-COVID or anything like that, you know, where there's 30, 20–30 people waiting before we open— nothing like that. Now we'll get like, you know

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15 you know, 10–15 people in line at once, which, which isn't too bad, but that's still a line. So we don't, we don't take phone orders anymore, right now, unless there's no line. If there's no line and somebody

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wants to order. You know, obviously I'll take it; but otherwise I can't because it's not fair to the people waiting in line. We've got to make sure that they, you know, get food. So. Can you share

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like one most memorable experience you had during the pandemic? Oh, that's a tough one. Yeah, I guess I do have one. And it doesn't have anything to do with.

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It doesn't have anything to do with the barbecue restaurant. And it's actually my– my Chinatown, "Chow Down" group. We did, we did a livestream on Facebook to raise money for our Chinatown group.

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And we ended up raising like 1100 bucks in two hours. So we did a live stream of– live stream of mukbang. So we did a mukbang video on noodles. So a friend of mine named Chris Wong owns a place called "Ninja

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Ramen". And he did one a few days, you know, two or three days before. So, you know, I've you know, I've been familiar with mukbang before; but not, not as an avenue to raise

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money, until I saw my friend Chris's Facebook video. And I thought it was really clever because he raised money eating chicken McNuggets I mean, who would have thought?

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So I got together with my, with my friends in the group and we decided to do a noodles mukbang to raise money and it was amazing. We, I think we got 10

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people, and then people donated live, on livestream and they would pick a person they'd like they would say, "I'm gonna pay Terry Wong, I'm going to donate five bucks each, each bowl," right?

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So basically, they donate, they did that 1100 dollars worth. So it was really cool. Really cool. Raised some money, too.

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So we're going to do some mukbangs. We just have to decide on which ones. What I think we're thinking about a dessert one. Maybe if we have

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time before crawfish season is over, we might do a crawfish one. You know something like that. Chicken wings. Something easy and small. You know? Yeah, that's easy to do.

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Did you have to eat a lot? 'Cause five dollars of... I think, I think I did, I think I did six bowls. Small, small bowls.

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Obviously we did small bowls, we, there's no way we could do we could do something like this with a regular or a big bowl. Would be crazy. Won't be able to do it. So we did the little small rice bowls.

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Chris, my buddy Chris did 15— 15 or 16; but he's crazy. He can eat a lot. He's super skinny. I don't know how he can eat so much.

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Just my last question, I guess regarding the social structure, we kind of start to— not just start— but this pandemic has helped us realize about the impact being more on the— like, uh, as—

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on the poorer population, and the people who, um, less social– social representation, are the ones who are impacted more either health– healthcare wise, like they don't have enough hygiene products, like the homeless

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people; and and also financial wise, people who are financially unstable, wasn't —yeah, had— doesn't have that, enough funds. So what is that change about your perspectives on the social,

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social structure and inequality in our current society? Yeah, I mean, that's a tough question. Because, you know, I wish there were a way or you know, maybe some of these bigger companies, you know, could make,

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you know, the little things like, you know, sanitizer or hand soap, you know, more accessible, or, you know, or cheaper even. Because during the pandemic, you know, you saw some alcohol

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companies step up and actually– actually change their, change their— what do you call it? Their, their product from alcohol to making hand sanitizer sanitizer,

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and I thought that was really cool. But the problem is, I don't really see anybody doing that anymore. I'm like, why not? You should just keep making it, you know what I mean? Keep making it, donate it or if

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you, or if you're not going to donate it, you know, sell it for, you know, at cost or something, you know, make a nickel, you know, something like that, you know? Because I feel like, I feel like when I, when I

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see sanitizer, you know, it's not as scarce now, but I feel like when I see it at Target or if I see it at Walmart or wherever online. I feel, I feel like it seems really expensive.

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I don't know about you. It just seems like it's expensive. But I don't know. Yeah, there's definitely some price increase. Yeah, it seems like it.

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And you know, I, I know, I know it's all about, you know, the supply chain thing too. So maybe there's no way around it. I don't know. But it does seem expensive to me.

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I'm lucky over here, because my mom made a whole bunch ourselves. So I'm good at my house. My mom, my mom, my mom is a crafty Chinese mom.

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So she made it herself. She has all this free time. So she makes hand sanitizer. Wow. So you have a home, like, manufacturer over

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there? Yeah. Yeah, she doesn't make that much but enough plenty, enough for the family luckily. That's the end of my questions. Is there anything else you'd like to share?

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For the community? And how we can support each other in times like this? Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Um, you know, I encourage, I encourage

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any fellow Asian Americans that have free time to, to patronize all the Asian restaurants. I understand if you can't go there,

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and you know, you want to take precautions, not to go and inside that's fine. But you know, still, maybe just get takeout something, because there's some of them suffering very, very, very, very bad. I myself, I

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try to go on Monday and Tuesday because that's really the only chance I can, can because of work. So me and my group of friends, we just tried to go support the Asian businesses every week.

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And we've been doing that for months. Like I have not eaten out this much in my entire life. Because, you know, we're trying to help out, you know, Asian businesses.

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So, I would definitely encourage all the Asian Americans, or, or non-Asian American. Doesn't matter. Anybody that likes Asian food, please go support Asian restaurant. Yeah, certainly.

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Well, thank you so much for your time and effort. No problem. So sorry, it was so hard to get a hold of me. It's, it's just crazy. It's crazy nuts. And see, I have to drive like a

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grandma because— I think I told you before— that I lost my eye, right? So I drive— I have to drive very slow.