Just as the economy is tanking, the Tea Palace’s star is rising.
The Tea Palace Asian Restaurant and Banquet in the Highlands opened in August 2008. Its banquet and wedding business has grown, but it’s still looking at ways to attract more customers, especially Western ones, to lunch and dinner.
This year is critical to the future of the restaurant, the largest Chinese restaurant in the state, said owner Duc Tran.
“We really hope the customer will support us,” said Tran. “The economy is very difficult.”
Tea Palace got a big boost this month when it was named one of the top 27 Asian restaurants in the nation in the Top Rising Stars category at the Sixth Annual Top100 Chinese Restaurants in the USA Awards on Las Vegas.
The awards are presented by the national Chinese Restaurant News, which approached the Tea Palace last summer about the awards, said Mipo Seto, the restaurant’s banquet coordinator.
“They sent someone undercover to check out the restaurant,” Tran said.
The Tea Palace is part of Tran’s larger vision to create an Asian center at
Cook Fei Wei prepares the traditional dim sum for a recent lunch at the The Tea Palace Asian Restaurant and Banquet.
Dean A. Radford/Renton Reporter
the Greater Hi-lands Shopping Center on Northeast Sunset Boulevard. His businesses in the shopping center include a bakery, a deli and the Viet Wah Asian Food Market.
The bakery supplies baked goods to the Tea Palace and is a retail outlet, too.
Viet Wah draws customers from Renton, Bellevue and as far away as Seattle.
“I think the market is doing OK,” Tran said.
Tran owns a number of food-services businesses in the region; but for now he’s spending about 80 percent of his time at the Tea Palace. The restaurant employs about 50 people.
The Tea Palace sits behind the Viet Wah in a space Tran spent time and money to extensively remodel. That work was done before the economy took a nosedive.
“We bought at the wrong time,” Tran said.
Now, he’s thinking creatively to find ways to bring in new customers.
He’ll soon introduce a new option for ordering his traditional Chinese food. He’s creating an additional menu that will change daily that will offer multi-course meals to make it simpler to order food.
Tran also hopes the additional menu will appeal to Western customers less accustomed to traditional Chinese food.
The regular menu will remain.
The restaurant specializes in traditional Chinese food, mostly from south China. That would include dishes known as Cantonese. Chinese and Vietnamese dim sum is served for lunch.
The Tea Palace will serve a Western-style meal for banquets, along with Asian food.
One big banquet customer is the Renton Chamber of Commerce, which held two events at the Tea Palace last year and is planning two more for this year. The restaurant can serve up as many as 800 people at a banquet.
The restaurant offers music and dancing on Friday nights. For Valentine’s Day, it will feature a violinist.
The Tea Palace
The Tea Palace Asian Restaurant and Banquet is at 2828 Sunset Lane N.E., in the Renton Highlands. The phone number is 425-228-9393. Web site
