Nobody talks about Richardson’s Chinatown the way they should. It doesn’t have the density of Houston’s or the fame of San Francisco’s, but what it has is its own story — and that story happens to be one of the more quietly remarkable things that happened to North Texas in the last 40 years.
In the mid-1980s, Chinese engineers and scientists started arriving in Richardson to take jobs at Texas Instruments and Rockwell International. The suburb was affordable and close to work, and the community that formed around those careers eventually became something larger than anyone had planned. A group of Chinese investors bought a strip shopping center at 400 N. Greenville Avenue — a 1960s-era property that had been called Richardson Terrace — and turned it into DFW Chinatown. Dragon statues at the entrance. Life-size figures from Chinese history lining the main drive. A 25,000-square-foot Asian grocery. A community center.
And a collection of restaurants that have been feeding the area’s Chinese, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese communities ever since. It opened in 1985 and has been expanding its footprint and its reputation every decade since.
It is not what most people picture when they hear the word Chinatown. It’s a strip mall in the suburbs. But strip malls built by communities for communities tend to be more alive than anything a developer puts together trying to simulate that feeling, and this one has that quality in abundance. Go on a Saturday afternoon and you’ll understand immediately. Here’s who’s there…