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TOOELE — Eddy Leo was just a teenager when he and his father bought an old restaurant nestled in the city of Tooele, half a world away from their hometown of Hong Kong.
Two weeks ago, Leo — or “Fast Eddy” as his customers now know him — hung up his apron after serving the community, literally, for the last 48 years.
And the Tooele community isn’t likely to forget him or his wife, Fong Leo, who has worked with him at the restaurant for the past few decades.
Leo and his father opened the Chinese and American food restaurant known as Sun Lok Yuen a few years after immigrating to the U.S., and Leo’s been the restaurant’s dishwasher, chef and manager ever since. He was eventually joined by his wife and their three children.
Sun Lok Yuen means New Happy Garden and was inspired by Leo’s desire for the restaurant to become a relaxing place for community members to come visit together. And the restaurant couldn’t have lived up to its name with more aplomb.
“Eddy and Fong retiring and Sun Lok Yuen closing will leave a big void in Tooele. Other restaurants have closed over the years, but I don’t believe them closing were missed as much as Sun Lok Yuen will be — not only for the good food, but mostly for two terrific people,” said Jim Millward, a frequent customer.
Over the last several decades, Leo and his wife have worked six days a week, 12 hours a day, until they eventually decided to retire as they approached their seventies and the kids left the nest.
“We just enjoy working, I guess. That’s what we do. Work, work, work to raise the family,” Leo said.
But the family’s customers will be the first to point out that work is not all the Leos do. They’ve brought people together for so many years, Millward said, and there were a number of tears shed at their retirement open house.
Karen Powell is now 71 but says she remembers Sun Lok Yuen from its infancy. She and her husband have been weekly customers for the past five or six years.
“We loved the food. Not only the Chinese food, but he made the best hamburgers in town. … You can tell when it’s already pre-done and frozen and thrown on the griddle, but he made his every day.”
But it’s really Eddy and Fong Leo who keep them coming back, she clarified. The restaurant owner once ran into Karen’s husband in the hallway of the hospital during one of her many stays and asked how she was doing. He then insisted her husband come pick up some egg drop soup from the restaurant, promising that it would taste best to his sick wife.
Leo refused to let her husband pay for the soup, and the warm liquid hit just the right spot for her beleaguered body, she said.
“It was just comfortable to go down (to Sun Lok Yuen) and not just eat and get up and leave, but they’d come and just talk to you and see how you’re doing,” her husband, Mike Powell, said.
Jim Gowans, another frequent customer set to turn 90 in just a month, said he’ll always remember the kindness and friendship with which Leo treated his son with special needs.
“(My son) Jimmy thinks the world of him. He’s that type of person,” Gowans said. “(Eddy) is a staple in the community.”
Though Leo said he’s enjoying retirement (and not being constantly on his feet), he feels a bit like a lost puppy.
“I really feel bad (for retiring),” Leo said. “After I announced it, (my customers) they all come and tell me how much they appreciate me and they said thank you to me. … I say, look, I should be the one to say thank you to all your guys’ support.”
His daughter Jennifer Leo said the community’s love for the Leos is mutual.
“I would see families come together to dine at the restaurant, friends running into each other, and strangers buying others' meals. Recently, a customer pointed to the corner booth and said, ‘That was my family’s table when I was growing up,’” she said.
And her father is missing his customers just as much as they are missing him.
“The people in Tooele are just like family. We grew up together,” he said. "The last 48 years were more than beautiful.”
