Christine Lee’s Chinese Restaurant, a name tied to South Florida dining for more than five decades, has closed. A recorded message on its phone line confirmed that second-generation owner Mary Lee has retired and the restaurant is now shut.
Michael Mayo first reported the closure in the Facebook group Let’s Eat, South Florida, writing, “After 55 years in South Florida, most recently at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale Beach, Christine Lee’s Chinese Restaurant has abruptly shuttered.” Mayo said that when he asked Mary Lee about a tip he received that the restaurant was closing, she denied it, but admitted times had been tough. Gulfstream Park had reduced live racing to three days a week, business was down, and a recent one-day closure by state health inspectors made matters worse. On a recent Friday visit, Mayo counted just four diners in a room that could hold more than 200.
From New Jersey to Sunny Isles to Hallandale
Christine Lee left Elizabeth, New Jersey, in the early 1970s after surviving a violent mugging. She opened the restaurant originally in Sunny Isles Beach, where it built a following at the Golden Strand Hotel. Later, it moved to the Thunderbird Hotel and then to a Collins Avenue strip mall. In the 1980s, a satellite location operated in Tamarac.
Mary Lee eventually took over from her mother, moving the restaurant to Gulfstream Park in 2007. It relocated again in 2018 to the track’s paddock area in Hallandale Beach, where it remained until closing this week…