A beloved Chinese restaurant in Bayside that shuttered during the pandemic is making its comeback this week.
The owner of Baybridge Szechuan Restaurant, Joseph Chen, announced that the neighborhood favorite is set to reopen on Thursday, July 22, according to a report from Patch.
After Chen retired and sold his restaurant to a new owner in 2019, the business at 20806 Cross Island Pkwy. floundered and was forced to close during COVID-19. Now, Chen is coming out of retirement to bring customers delicious Chinese cuisine once again.
According to Chen, much of day to day will operate the same as it had for the three decades that the restaurant has been at the Baybridge Commons Mall. One thing that diners will recognize is the eatery’s menu filled with familiar dishes like Peking duck, Szechuan dumplings, sesame chicken and moo shu pork.
The owner said that the restaurant will be open seven days a week for lunch and dinner.
He told Patch that much of his staff, who had stayed on with the new owners in 2019, would also be back, saying that it was “one of my main purposes for reopening.”
“My staff are in their early 60s and late 50s, so it’s very hard to find a new job, and they asked me if I could come back and reopen the business and let everybody have a job,” Chen told Patch.
Chen and his wife and business partner Carol worked out a deal to make some of the staff members business partners so that the aging couple could do less work while keeping Baybridge Szechuan open.
