House Of Hong

The House of Hong restaurant in Seattle’s Chinatown/International District has been ordered by the U.S. Department of Labor to pay $165,000 in back wages and penalties.

According to the government, the restaurant violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act by paying neither minimum wage nor overtime to 31 employees.

Government investigators say the House of Hong paid wait staff only $5 per hour for overtime, while other employees worked up to 65 hours per week but weren’t paid overtime. The restaurant’s payroll records were incomplete and inaccurate, according to labor department officials.

“The labor department is committed to ensuring that low-wage employees are properly paid for all hours worked, including the correct overtime rate when they work more than 40 hours in a work week,” said Donna Hart, district director for the department’s Wage Hour Division in Seattle.

House of Hong’s dining room is one of the most diverse places in the city; people of all ethnicities love House of Hong!

I don’t go there anymore, but it’s where my dim sum odyssey began. At first it seemed like there is an endless variety, but after a while, we started to notice that that same shrimp ball is just being fried in 20 different ways. So we started to go to the other dim sum houses in the ID, where there were more Cantonese people and more exotic offerings.

House of Hong probably has a menu in the evenings, but I love it for the hours and hours of dim sum they serve – from 10 am until 4:30 pm every day of the week. A great selection of tasty little treats gets wheeled around the dining room on carts by efficient servers, everything from baked and steamed humbao to potstickers to chinese broccoli to congee to shumai to every form of dumpling known to man. I especially adore the egg custard tarts with their crisp sweet short crust. Vegetarians might need to beware, though there are meatless items most have meat or seafood in some form.

Plenty of room and huge tables for large groups, and booths for smaller parties. Parking in an adjacent lot and one across the street, the parking attendant is a lovely older gentleman who always has a smile.