Route One Saugus Route 1 Saugus MA Rt 1 » Kowloon Saugus

Kowloon Bob Wong – URGENT – Say NO to the Rollback!

Route One Saugus MA — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:57:28 +0000

Kowloon – An Urgent Message to the Town of Saugus

From the Kowloon Restaurant Owners & Employees

Please Say NO to the Rollback!!! Call your Selectmen Now: 781-231-4124

Why this Message:

This is a movement by a group of residents to have operating hours of Liquor License holders’ rollback to 1 am.
This would be Absolutely Devastating to our businesses and the livelihood of our employees.
We a Family Owned, independent restaurant that has been in Saugus 59 years!!!! (Only Kowloon and Prince are owned by the original families) Longer than most residents have lived in Saugus.
Using a broad stroke and blanket approach to solve isolated problems is not FAIR!

We can’t afford to lose more hours!

A few years ago… we had already suffered a 10% Loss in Sales after a 2 hour rollback of our hours from 3:30 to 1:30 am! And we will lose another 10% if our hours are cut again.

We can’t and our employees can’t afford to lost anymore income

Although other restaurants such as McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts, and I-Hop are allowed to stay open (24 Hours!)… Because we are a liquor license holder… we have to force all of our customers out of the building by 2:00 am.

Even though NO LIQOUR is served after 2:00 am we are not allowed to sell food or even take-out orders after that hour! And our doors have to be locked at 1:15 am so no new customers can enter.

Do you know what impact this new rollback will have on us? (As well as others)

If the rollback succeeds we will have to FORCE all of our customers out of the building by 1:00 am.
That means we must lock our doors at 12:15 (just after midnight) So that any new customers will be out in time!!!
We do over 10% of food and beverage business after MIDNIGHT!

List of some people we will lose:

We attract a well behaved crowd looking for a place to go, why else would parents form all over, drop off their school aged children after a school dance, prom, drama club play, or other reasons (all after midnight!!!)
We attract workers leaving their late night jobs. Such as airline employees, other restaurant employees, hospital workers and many others.
We attract people coming back after a show, a movie or sporting event looking for a late night snack or meal.
We also attract numerous celebrities. Such as professional wrestlers, (70 of them recently… after their event)
Red Sox owner John Henry and actor Don Wahlberg have stopped by after a concert.
Professional athletes come in after the game.
All of these people need and want a place to go after MIDNIGHT.
We have already lost a large portion of these customers from the last rollback and now we stand to lose EVEN MORE!!!

Why do this to us AGAIN?

We are in a terrible recession and business is already down!!!
It’s ironic that the town voted to increase local meals tax to 7% there by receiving ¾% in local aid to help solve our fiscal crisis during this very BAD ECONOMY.
Our costs are constantly RISING! (as everyone’s are!)
- The Kowloon has not laid off a single person (we have over 250 employees that depend on us!)
- Mandatory Health Insurance has increased our costs!
- Water and Sewer rates increased. We now pay over $300,000 yearly.
- Real Estate Tax – approximately $280,000 yearly.
- Gas and Electric – over $350,000 yearly.

People do not flock to us from other towns for last call!!! We lock our doors at 1:15 am – and they would never make it in time.

We are good citizens!

We feel we have been good partners in the community and will always give back.
Does the majority of the community want to do this to us??? Or is it only the wish of a few? And Why?
We strongly urge many of the people involved with various organizations in town, to let our leaders know you support us. We could use your voice, phone calls to you selectmen, and help!!!

The Solution:

So before you decide on creating a one-size fits all remedy please remember you do have alternative.

You can treat each establishment individually. If there is a pattern of abuse or problem the town can take action on each separately.

Our town leaders should be aware that they do have alternatives, and obligations to not only take care of its problems but also to let Good Business and Community Partners thrive and succeed.

We have been here 59 years and have been loyal and hopefully good for the town… and it would be EXTREMELY unfair (again!) for a few people in Saugus to be able to judge all liquor license holders the same. We are not!

Respectfully on behalf of the Wong family and our employees,

- Bob Wong

Kowloon Chinese Restaurant – Route One Saugus

Route One Saugus MA — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:51:50 +0000

Kowloon Restaurant, with a capacity of 1200 seats, was established by the Wong Family in 1950 and has grown to become one of the premier multi-concept dining establishments in the United States.

Courtesy of: www.hiddenboston.com

Boy, do I love Route 1 in Saugus. From the huge dinosaur overlooking a miniature golf course to a replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa at Prince Pizza, Route 1 is perhaps the most tacky, cheesy road in the Boston area (not that this is a bad thing). And perhaps one of the cheesiest, and most fun places along Route 1 is the Kowloon, a huge Chinese restaurant and entertainment complex on the northbound side of this road.

The Kowloon has a number of different rooms, complete with funky Polynesian themes, including a boat hanging from the ceiling, a lagoon surrounded by tables, and a luau room. We actually were seated in one of the more subdued rooms off to the side, where we went on to order some rather…interesting dishes. Mine, for instance, was as wacky as the restaurant itself.

I ordered the flaming ambrosia, which is made as follows: Hollow out a pineapple; put a bunch of chicken fingers inside; fill the pineapple to the top with duck sauce; insert pineapple chunks and maraschino cherries; pour alcohol over the whole thing; set it all on fire. Now I’m not saying that it was delicious (and it definitely was not healthy), but it was a dinner that I will never forget!

And, of course, I can’t wait to go back to the Kowloon, as it epitomizes what is so unique about this stretch of highway north of Boston.

If you want the address for the Kowloon, here it is: Kowloon Restaurant, 948 Broadway (Route 1 North), Saugus, MA 01906. The phone number is (781) 233-0077.

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Kowloon, China? No — Kowloon, Saugus: If you have…

May 14, 2006 | 11:05 am

Courtesy of: www.davecopeland.com

Kowloon, China? No — Kowloon, Saugus: If you have ever lived on the North Shore in Massachusetts, you’ll know why you’re allowed to make fun of the weekend I had when I type the next sentence: I went to Kowloon last night.

For those of you who haven’t been, Kowloon is a gaudy, tiki bar/Polynesian restaurant with an identity crisis on Route 1 North in Saugus (Route 1 is a story unto itself). I was out to the comedy club tucked into the leaking attic of the restaurant with my softball team (we lose a lot but we still have fun). And the comedy was good — we saw three comics, including Jim Dunn of Farrelly Brothers movie fame.

The restaurant, however, was exactly how I remembered it. Which was a lot less than good.

The menu is expansive, full of lead-laden dishes from a variety of different countries and culinary styles, with PuPu platters that drop to the bottom of your stomach like a brick and sushi that is, at best, suspect. Each section of the menu is color-coded for different types of cuisine: red for Chinese, sky blue for sushi, orange for Thai, etc.

Not much has changed in Kowloon since it first opened in 1950. It’s a place full of multiple banquet rooms, fake palm trees and cocktails served in plastic pineapple cups. When I was in high school it was the kind of place you’d go to after a prom if you had a bad date or if you had a good fake i.d. I think the last time I was there was at least 10 years ago, on Christmas night with a couple of friends who, like me, had nothing better to do after a day with our respective families.

And despite all this, there were throngs of people flooding into Kowloon even after our show got out at 9. It’s the type of place where middle aged men who haven;t played sports in 20 years can feel comfortable wearing nylon warm up suits. There are wanna-be toughs pulling I-Rocs up to the valet. There are huge family gatherings, a high school field trip and people who think that a Scorp Bowl for two is a perfectly acceptable drink to order three or four times — for themselves — is perfectly acceptable.

To know why Kowloon remains so popular is to know Route 1. After college I took a job as a community reporter on the South Shore and was surprised at how many more zoning disputes there were in the quaint South Shore towns. And the reason? They didn’t have a Route 1 to throw all the places that no one else wanted in their backyard.

Want to build a massively tacky Chinese restaurant? Put it on Route 1. Big box retail? Route 1. Route 1 is the perfect place for a giant steak house with scores of life-sized plastic cattle grazing on the patch of lawn between the building and the highway. Want to open a porn store? Sleazy motels that boast heart-shaped jacuzzis and rent rooms by the hour? A strip bar? Put it on Route 1. How about a miniature golf course with a day-glo orange Tyrannosaurus Rex hovering over the highway? You guessed it — Route 1.