The Peculiar Truth about the World’s Rudest Waiter

• Late at night, savvy San Franciscans would wind their way through Chinatown to an obscure, tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurant on Washington Street near Grant. It was called Sam Wo.

• Customers had to enter through the first floor kitchen and climb stairs to the second and third stories. The narrow eatery, barely twelve feet wide, if that, had very few tables and seats.

• The head waiter, a round-faced sneering Chinese man, would often greet the customers with the words “Sit down and shut up!” He would then toss menus at them, slam down plates on the tables, and insulted diners throughout their meals.

• Tourists were shocked. Locals couldn’t get enough of the waiter’s rude behavior and kept coming back for more.

• His name was Edsel Ford Fong. Long before Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi, he was billed as the World’s Rudest Waiter.

• Throughout the 1960s and into the 1980s, he served up sizable portions of authentic Chinese food with heaping helpings of verbal abuse. Over the years, his antics and his reputation grew, and he became a local legend.

• San Francisco boasts the oldest Chinatown in the United States, and Sam Wo had one of the city’s oldest Chinese restaurants. Some estimates suggest it was built after the famous 1906 earthquake.

• There was never an individual named Sam Wo. Those are Cantonese words that translate to “three in peace,” a reference to the three brothers who started the business.

• The neighborhood is filled with dozens of Chinese restaurants, so standing out from the crowd, especially with a small space on a less-traveled street, should have made it hard to remain in operation.

• Edsel was his real first name - the middle name was a spoof - and the true spelling of his surname was Fung. He was born and raised in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and he was the owner’s son. When he began his insulting style - the polar opposite of how diners are treated at all other respectable restaurants - the business thrived.

• Fong’s brash manners and bad conduct were a kind of poor man’s dinner theater. Among his notorious antics:

• When customers were taking too long to study the menu, he would say, “What is this, a library?”

• Or he would order for them.

• If someone ordered a dish Fong didn’t like he would tell them it was a rip-off and make them order something else.

• He would curse when asked to explain how the food was prepared.

• If he brought the wrong food, he would tell customers to shut up and eat it.

• He refused to give forks, only chopsticks.

• He made customers get their own glasses of water.

• If he didn’t like the way someone looked, he would refuse to serve them.

• He would make fun of women’s dates. Or flirt with them. Sometimes he would grope them.

• He would tell them in advance how much of a tip they needed to leave him.

• After eating, he would make the customers wipe down their tables.

• A sign inside the restaurant that Fong supposedly wrote stated No Booze, No Bullshit, No Jive, No Coffee, Milk, Soft Drinks, Fortune Cookies.

• Herb Caen was a widely-read columnist in the San Francisco Chronicle. He wrote frequently about Edsel Ford Fong. The novelist Armistead Maupin about him for Tales of the City. Conan O’Brien visited the restaurant, too.

• The World’s Rudest Waiter passed away in 1984 at the age of 56.

• Despite new ownership, a change of address, and 116 years in operation, Sam Wo closed for good in January 2025.