Insurance companies, he said, resisted paying for damage caused by break-ins and burglaries at his stores. He had seen enough violence in Cambodia.Īnd like many Cambodian refugees at the time, he harbored a distrust of institutions that was magnified by what he experienced in America. He installed panes of bulletproof plexiglass at many of his stores, but he never bought a gun, he says. He freely gave security camera footage to detectives who asked for it, but he never testified against any local resident. He told drug dealers and gang members to keep crime out of his shops, but he rarely called the police because he wanted to maintain peace - and because it often took officers hours to arrive. Survival, Eng learned, meant refusing to take sides in conflicts between police and gangs. But it didn’t take him long to figure out that when trouble landed on his doorstep, the less he said, the better. So that first night, when reporters and police officers came to ask him whether he knew anything about the killing, he told them he hadn’t seen anything. He had spent his entire life savings on the fried chicken restaurant, and he could not afford to fail. He didn’t have money to advertise, so he gave out free samples and made a diet of leftover chicken. At 8 a.m., he came back and reopened the store because he couldn’t afford to close.įor six months, he broke even by working 14-hour shifts by himself and paying himself what was left over after costs, which wasn’t much. On his first day running the restaurant, police investigating a homicide roped off his street before he could close for the day.Įng slept in the restaurant until the streets reopened at 5 a.m., then drove home for a shower. Eng’s windshield was shot up three times that first year. That’s when Eng bought an aging taco stand at 91st and Central and converted it to a Louisianas Famous Fried Chicken.įor the next few years, he felt as if he had traded one civil war for another. Few investors wanted to sink money into South L.A. Rioters burned down three Louisiana restaurants, Dion said. Three weeks after Eng came to the U.S., the acquittal of police officers who beat motorist Rodney King sparked the Los Angeles Riots. It’s unclear where those recipes came from, but Eng said many Cambodian franchisees converted existing Chinese restaurants to the Louisiana brand and simply kept takeout Chinese cuisine on the menu.īy the time Eng arrived in America, there were about 50 Louisiana franchises, the vast majority in South Los Angeles, where the chain proliferated despite a roiling backdrop of racial unrest. Somewhere along the way, Louisiana restaurants added Chinese food. It was a short hop from frying doughnuts to frying chicken, Eng said. Thousands went to work in the doughnut business, where earlier waves of Cambodian immigrants already had bought shops and found jobs. Desperation drove many to settle and start businesses in impoverished neighborhoods with high crime and low rent. Shifts in welfare and refugee policy meant that Cambodians got less aid during that time, Curtis said. Curtis, a historian who has written about Cambodian immigrants.Ībout 50,000 Cambodian refugees settled in Los Angeles County, where studies show a majority have suffered from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. His experience was common among Cambodian refugees in Los Angeles, said Erin M. In 1992, he joined thousands of refugees and fled to the United States.Įng, 18 at the time, took a job mopping floors at a Louisiana Famous Fried Chicken. It was a short hop from frying doughnuts to frying chicken.Įng was born during a period of civil war and attempted genocide that killed nearly 2 million people in Cambodia between 19.
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