THE story of how entrepreneur Annie Go-Wong finally got to own the popular Chinese restaurant Lido Cocina Tsina is like listening to a crime thriller unfold. It is not your usual tale of generational change in ownership by Filipino-Chinese families of a family corporation.
The story includes trusting investors, lying and cheating partners, swapping of suits and countersuits, with the special participation of a sheriff and lots and lots of lawyers.
“Every time I think about it, my blood pressure rises,” says Annie, still visibly disgusted by the entire experience. Annie is your typical Chinoy born and raised to do business by a family of pure Chinese entrepreneurs. She is small in stature, goes around without makeup and is dressed in jeans and a plain shirt most of the day. But don’t let her looks fool you. She is one feisty lady who can bring down the wrath of God on you once she sets her mind to it.
But ask about her family, especially her 3-year-old son, and Annie’s face lights up like the sun. She bilocates: for a few months every year, she lives in Canada tending to her son, Branden Stanley, and husband Robert Wong, a Chinese-Canadian who is in software development.
Right now, she is focused on strengthening and expanding Lido’s network of restaurants in Metro Manila (there are 16 at present), and is looking forward to double-digit growth in sales this year.
LIDO’S BEGINNINGS
Founded in 1936 by a Cantonese chef surnamed Lido, the small eatery on T. Alonzo Street in Santa Cruz, Manila, became immensely popular because of Chef Lido’s pugon-roasted asado. The dish consists of a carefully-cured pork loin, then roasted in an old-fashioned brick oven heated by firewood.
By the 1970s, Chef Lido had sold the restaurant and migrated to Vancouver, Canada. The business passed through several hands until Annie’s mom, Aileen Go, a wholesale importer of general merchandise, became a partner in 1997.
“I’ve been managing the restaurant since 1997,” says Annie, as their business partner apparently couldn’t make a go of it on his end.
From a one-piece bond paper-sized laminated menu, Annie, then a 22-year-old who grew up watching Wok with Yan and that unnamed Taiwanese lady’s morning cooking show, and who had begun experimenting on her own with recipes she saw on TV, created dishes that expanded the restaurant’s menu, covering everything from appetizers, beef, pork and vegetable courses, as well as desserts.
What remained constant and popular was the Pugon-Roasted Asado, as well as the Chami, a dish using miki noodles smothered and simmered in its own special sauce. Another popular dish is the 3 Cups Chicken (San-bei-ji), a dish that traces its roots to China’s Song dynasty in Jiangxi, and served in a traditional earthenware sizzling hot. Meanwhile, every January and around Chinese New Year, diners widely anticipate the Pata Tim.
By 2003 Annie started expanding Lido’s reach through franchising, the first being on Madison Street in Greenhills, followed by West Avenue in Quezon City. “A year before I began branching out from Chinatown, I was in the kitchen the entire time just standardizing the measurements for the ingredients of all the dishes I had developed. I didn’t go to the mall, never went to any coffee shops—I was in the kitchen as soon as I woke up. I literally smelled like the kitchen.” Although trained in computers in a Baguio college after spending her elementary and high-school years at Grace Christian High School (now a college), Annie’s passion was really cooking. “When I was in Grade 4 or 5, I made shrimp balls from a recipe shown on TV. My family loved it. And soon after, every time my father [the late Sam Go, who used to own 456 Department Store in Baguio] had friends over, he would ask me to make shrimp balls. Friends would hanker for it and ask if there were any shrimp balls before coming to the house,” Annie laughs, recalling her early years in the kitchen.
That shrimp-ball recipe, among the many she experimented on, found its way to Lido’s menu. The Stir-Fried Assorted Vegetables, the top-seller among the restaurant’s veggie dishes, was also a result of her kitchen experiment.
“One summer in Canada, I bought a lot of fresh vegetables from the grocery. I was at a loss on how to finish them all. I sautéed them and my husband loved the resulting dish, which is nice and light.”
Annie even went so far as to study how to make dim sum in Canton sometime in 2000. “Dim sum is the hardest to make among all the dishes,” she recalls, describing how painstaking it was to get the dough just right, and the ingredients just enough, so the dim sum wouldn’t break upon steaming.
Amid her plans for expanding the business, however, misunderstandings with her family’s partner ensued. A city sheriff padlocked the original restaurant on T. Alonzo, along with other assets, including the all-important brick oven, after their business partner lost in a lawsuit filed by his other partners in another investment.
“I was so stressed, because my franchisee was begging for help. I couldn’t supply him any seasonings. I had to set up a new commissary just to serve that one store,” Annie narrates.
ON HER OWN
BY 2008, Annie finally became sole owner of Lido, with its trademark and business name all properly registered in all relevant government agencies, including the Intellectual Property Office. (From just Panciteria Lido, the restaurant was rebranded to Lido Cocina Tsina, home of the Chinese Pugon-Roasted Asado, to drive home the point that it is a proper Chinese restaurant, not just a regular panciteria, she stresses.) And despite another restaurant pretending to be the original “Lido,” Annie’s edge is that the cook responsible for the delicious Pugon-Roasted Asado, Avelino Mabini, Tatay Abe to most of Lido’s employees, is still with her.
“Totoy pa lang si Abe, andun na sya sa kusina ng Lido,” Annie says. “He’s been with Lido for 49 years,” and actually lives in the restaurant’s commissary in West Triangle. It is the photo of Tatay Abe, now 58, dressed up in a white chef’s uniform handling the brick oven, that many diners see on the walls of every Lido Cocina Tsina branch. The restaurant is a favorite of families and barkadas because of the reasonable prices of Lido’s dishes and the for-share servings. Even its deliveries are so strong, making up about 15 percent of the business’s system-wide sales, Annie says.
Because she is also a resident of Canada, Annie is extremely gratified to be surrounded by loyal executives and staff.
“I’m lucky. Wala akong masabi sa team ko—they’re so dedicated. My brother Mark [the youngest of four siblings and Annie’s only brother] also helps me out a lot. He is in charge of the commissary. When I’m not here, he oversees the entire operation. Siya lang ang nagtiya-tiyaga sa akin,” she laughs. One sister is a Lido franchisee in Makati City.
And so despite the headache and stress she underwent over the years in acquiring the business, Annie is now confident Lido Cocina Tsina’s business would further prosper. “’Di natutulog ’yung sa itaas,” she says, her way of expressing thanks that all the hardships she encountered is finally being rewarded with success.