At Leong’s Asian Diner, a wine press does a job it was never designed to do.
Each week, cabbage for the restaurant’s egg rolls is shredded, blanched and packed into the press to remove the water. The cabbage is then chopped and mixed with shrimp, pork, vegetables, seasonings and peanut butter, the binder David Leong used in his original recipe. The process takes two days. After that, approximately 1,000 egg rolls are rolled by hand.
The restaurant also makes its own plum sauce and hot mustard. For Ling and Wing Yee Leong, these labor-intensive practices are not nostalgia. They are how the family has always prepared its food.
“We still prepare our food the way he did,” Wing says. “In this day and age of processed foods and pre-made food, we still do it the old-fashioned way.”
For more than six decades, the Leong family has shaped Springfield’s cashew chicken tradition. David created the dish, and Ling and Wing now carry forward the recipes, standards and community relationships that made it part of the city’s identity.
Their father’s story began long before cashew chicken became a Springfield tradition.
According to Ling, David arrived in the United States in 1940 with $2 in his pocket. After learning that military service could provide a path to citizenship, he enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1942 and later survived the D-Day landing at Omaha Beach.
An unexpected kitchen assignment during his service helped reveal the talent that would shape the rest of his life. When an Army cook called in sick, David’s fellow soldiers recommended him as a replacement. He prepared the meal and impressed a colonel so thoroughly that he was reassigned to cook for officers.
After the war, David continued cooking professionally in restaurants around the country. While working in Pensacola, Florida, he met Dr. John Tsang, a Springfield neurosurgeon visiting the area. Ling says Tsang described David’s meal as the best Chinese food he had eaten since leaving China and encouraged him to move to Missouri.
David came to Springfield in 1955 to help operate Lotus Garden, considered the city’s first Chinese restaurant. He later moved to the Grove Supper Club, where his cooking developed a following.
In 1963, David and his brother, Gee Yuen Leong, opened Leong’s Tea House on West Sunshine Street. At the time, Sunshine was a two-lane road surrounded by open fields. Ling recalls that many people thought his father was “crazy” for opening a restaurant “in the middle of a cornfield.”
Many Springfield diners were still unfamiliar with Chinese cuisine, but fried chicken was something they knew. David used that familiarity as an invitation, combining breaded, fried chicken with a savory brown sauce, cashews and green onions.
Springfield-style cashew chicken was born.
The dish soon spread beyond Leong’s Tea House. Former employees opened restaurants of their own, and other Asian restaurant owners adopted cashew chicken as a way to introduce local diners to their food. It became a menu standard across the region and supported generations of restaurant owners and employees.
Leong’s Tea House closed in 1997 after more than three decades in business. For the next 13 years, Springfield had no restaurant bearing the Leong name, even as cashew chicken remained one of the city’s most recognizable foods.
During those years, Wing worked in several Springfield restaurants, including serving as an opening chef. Whenever he offered cashew chicken, he says, customers responded. Cashew chicken nights filled dining rooms, confirming that the demand for his father’s food had never disappeared.
Eventually, Wing began exploring an opportunity to take over another restaurant. He brought his father and brother to see the space, expecting David to offer his opinion.
Instead, David announced a different plan.
“That’s OK, but you don’t need it,” he told Wing. “We’re going to do our own restaurant again.”
The decision surprised the family. David was approaching 90 and had recently experienced a serious health scare during a trip to China. According to Wing, the experience made his father more aware of his mortality and less interested in remaining retired. David also wanted the Leong name restored to the restaurant community and the family’s original methods represented accurately.
Leong’s Asian Diner opened in 2010 with David and his sons working together. The response demonstrated how much affection Springfield still held for the family. Wing recalls that during the first several months, the restaurant served approximately 1,000 guests a day. The dining room could fill within 10 minutes of opening, with a line still waiting outside.
Wing brought professional culinary experience to the kitchen and refined some of the family’s techniques. The brothers have different backgrounds and do not always agree, but they say their decisions ultimately come back to what is best for the restaurant.
The food continues to evolve in careful ways. What has not changed is the commitment to preparing it in-house, maintaining consistency and treating the restaurant as part of the community.
That community connection can be measured in generations. Ling and Wing hear from customers who remember first dates, Christmas parties and family celebrations at Leong’s Tea House. Former employees have returned with their children looking for jobs. Now, the restaurant is beginning to see the grandchildren of people who once worked for the family.
“We not only feed people,” Wing says. “We become part of their family, and their family becomes part of ours.”
Springfield’s embrace of the dish has also taken unexpected forms. When the Springfield Cardinals approached the family about temporarily playing as the Springfield Cashew Chickens, the brothers were initially uncertain. The alternate identity became a popular promotion, with merchandise repeatedly selling out and images of the jerseys reaching fans well beyond Missouri.
The dish traveled even farther in February 2025, Ling says, when the office of U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley invited the Leong family to Washington, D.C., for a Missouri-themed luncheon for senators and staff.
Because of security requirements, the Leongs provided their recipes and worked with U.S. Capitol chefs rather than preparing the food themselves. After the meal, Hawley spoke about the family’s history.
David died on July 21, 2020, less than a month before his 100th birthday. Today, his portrait watches over the dining room where Ling and Wing continue the family legacy he began more than six decades ago.
Asked whether he expects to keep frying cashew chicken for the rest of his life, Wing laughs.
“Probably till the day I die,” he says.
READER INFORMATION
Leong’s Asian Diner is located at 1540 W. Republic Road. For current hours and the menu, visit leongsasiandiner.com.