This year, businesses have been hit hard due to COVID-19. When it hit us in March, people didn’t know what to do. Most people were scared, so they stayed home. Businesses didn’t know what to do, so they closed. As the months went on, businesses started opening back up. However, they had understandably lost a lot of money and customers. Chains took this loss pretty well, but it was tougher on local restaurants. One of those restaurants is King House, a Chinese buffet located downtown. King House shut its doors for good on Tuesday, October 27. They announced this via a Facebook post that explains their closing: “Due to Covid effects, we decided to close King House Buffet […] so that we can spend more time with family.”
King House has been a part of the downtown scene for a very long time, even since my mom was in college! I have loved this restaurant ever since I got to the age of eating solid food, as I would always choose to go there for my birthday. Because I was such a loyal fan, the infamous “pigeon incident” did not phase me.
For those of you who don’t know, in May of 2019, reports came out about King House holding live pigeons in their basement. This is a true event, I will admit that. However, the owner posted on Facebook saying “We should not let our employees leave the pigeons in our restaurant’s basement when the farmers brought those here, and we won’t do it again in the future.” This implies that the pigeons were an employee’s, rather than being owned by the restaurant itself. Whenever my friends asked me why I would still eat at King House after that controversy, I would always say the same thing. “The pigeons do not define them.” They made a mistake, and that also doesn’t mean they were planning on serving pigeons on the buffet line. Sadly, I had only gone a few more times between that incident and the final closing.
Because they were truly shutting it all down, the restaurant decided to sell their decorations, kitchen supplies, and other large items via a 3-day “estate sale” of sorts. I was planning on going to check it out, but didn’t because I knew it would be busy with all the other King House fans. I was right. On their Facebook it shows they only have left a microwave, milk dispenser, high chairs, and a few other decorations. The quick cleaning out of the other items really goes to show the amount of people that still love King House after all these years.
The announcement of closing really hit me hard, and I’m sure many other people felt the same way. King House was here for many generations, but it looks like this was the last. Rest in peace, King House.