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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.