Keanu Reeves has spent decades building a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most down-to-earth stars.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!And one story from San Francisco perhaps sums that up better than most.
Long before The Matrix Resurrections brought him back to a familiar Chinatown restaurant, Reeves had already left an impression there for a much simpler reason: he waited his turn and posed for a photo with a young fan.
The restaurant in question is House of Nanking, a much-loved Shanghainese spot in San Francisco’s Chinatown that has been operating since 1988.
Its biggest rule for customers is simple: Everybody waits their turn.
It did not matter how famous someone was, how wealthy they were or whether they happened to be one of the most recognisable actors on the planet. That became particularly relevant in 1997, when Reeves arrived dressed in black and joined the queue for a table.
Kathy Fang, who was still in high school at the time, recognised him immediately.
He was her “favourite actor of all time,” she recalled to The San Francisco Standard. So naturally, she ran to her father Peter and tried to convince him to bend the rules.
He was having none of it.
“I always tell all the associates in my restaurant: You can never let any people, especially movie stars or rich men, cut the line to get in,” said Peter, who has fed the likes of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, billionaire Marc Benioff, and comedian Kathy Griffin. “House of Nanking has to treat all kinds of people equally.”
For Kathy, things were about to become even more embarrassing.
Peter, who did not watch many Hollywood films, eventually approached Reeves to explain the restaurant’s policy.
Then he turned towards his daughter. “Kathy, come take a picture,” he said. “It’s him! It’s Sean Connery!”
It was, of course, not Sean Connery.
Kathy apologised to Reeves on her father’s behalf, but the Bill & Ted star took the whole thing in stride.
“Keanu Reeves was such a gentleman,” she recalled. “You know how everybody talks about him being the nicest person in the industry.”
Rather than appearing offended, Reeves thanked Peter and said he was deeply honoured to have been mistaken for an actor as talented as Sean Connery.
Before he left, Kathy grabbed a disposable camera and took a photograph with him.
That picture would end up meaning far more than either of them could have expected at the time.
It was displayed near the restaurant’s front window and remained there for years.
Then, more than two decades later, the story somehow came full circle.
In 2020, Reeves returned to San Francisco to film The Matrix Resurrections.
By then, House of Nanking had become part of his history in more ways than one.
The restaurant was chosen as a filming location for the movie, meaning a place where Reeves had once patiently waited for a table would now become part of the Matrix universe itself.
The connection became even more fitting because of the restaurant’s noodles. In the film, Neo is shown eating what are described as “really good noodles,” and House of Nanking became the real-life setting behind that moment.
Kathy, by then 36 weeks pregnant and dealing with the pressures of keeping the family business going during the pandemic, initially had no idea what the production involved.
A producer contacted the restaurant about a secret project.
After a stack of NDAs were signed, the family learned exactly what was happening.
The Matrix was coming to House of Nanking.
A Hollywood crew arrived at the restaurant at 5:00AM, with Kathy and Peter the only people working in the kitchen.
They ended up making the same plate of yang chun noodles around 20 times so that it would remain visibly hot and steaming during filming.
Director Lana Wachowski also wanted the restaurant to retain its familiar, well-worn appearance.
The production team temporarily removed newspaper clippings and awards from the walls, recreated them to avoid legal issues and then put them back in their original positions.
But one item already hanging inside the restaurant was particularly significant.
The old photograph of Kathy and Reeves from 1997 was kept in shot – which meant viewers watching Neo eat noodles could spot an image of a much younger Reeves hanging on the wall behind him.
The production crew later made a cleaner copy of the original photograph so it could continue being displayed by the restaurant’s window.
And Reeves did something else that brought the story right back to where it started; more than 20 years after the original disposable-camera photo was taken, he and Kathy recreated it.
The two photographs quickly went viral – leading to Kathy to share a video all about their meeting and clearing up the most-asked questions.
But the relationship between House of Nanking and The Matrix did not end when filming wrapped.
The restaurant has continued to thrive, and its history has now been captured in a cookbook featuring more than 100 recipes and stories.
House of Nanking: Family Recipes From San Francisco’s Favorite Chinese Restaurant includes recipes for some of the restaurant’s best-known dishes, alongside stories about the Fang family and the business they built.
At the centre of it is the family itself.
Kathy had also become deeply involved in the family business, later opening sister restaurant Fang and becoming a Food Network personality.
The cookbook includes House of Nanking favourites such as sesame chicken, shrimp packets and onion pancakes.
And, naturally, it also includes the dish with perhaps the strongest Hollywood connection of all.
Readers can now make the yang chun noodle soup associated with Neo’s “really good noodles.”
The dish is described as a simple bowl featuring fresh wheat noodles and clear bone broth, seasoned with soy, sesame and scallions.
“Every dish has a little story about it,” Peter said. “This is a very different cookbook. It’s almost like watching a documentary movie.”
Years later, House of Nanking remains busy, the recreated photographs have travelled far beyond the restaurant walls, and the noodles that once appeared on screen can now be made from the family’s own cookbook.
Featured image credit: Instagram/House of Nanking
