Restaurants

Mary Chung Restaurant will permanently close at the end of 2022

The owner, who is in her 80s, is retiring.

Takeout from Mary Chung Restaurant. Photo by Clea Simon

By Shira Laucharoen

1 minute to read

A Chinese restaurant that has become an institution in Cambridge will close at the end of this year.

Mary Chung Restaurant in Central Square will serve its final meals on Dec. 31, according to manager Tom Chung. The eatery has been in business for 40 years. Tom Chung confirmed the reason for the closure: The owner, his mother Mary Chung, is retiring. She is in her 80s.

“We’ve been thinking about this for a while now,” Tom Chung said. “It feels like a good time now to retire. We wanted to retire on a safe and healthy note.”

The restaurant pivoted from dine-in to takeout-only during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because Mary Chung was no longer offering table service, the restaurant was able to operate with a “skeletal crew,” Tom Chung said. He told Boston.com that he does not know what will happen to the space once Mary Chung closes down, but that he “couldn’t ask for a better landlord” in MIT.

Advertisement:

Mary Chung is popular among college students and locals alike, and the restaurant was recently voted by Boston.com readers as a top place to enjoy dumplings. The restaurant serves traditional Chinese food, and guests are enthusiastic about the Suan La Chow Show, a dish that includes wontons, bean sprouts, and a spicy sauce. Tom Chung added that visitors also love the scallion pancakes and dun dun noodles.

He said he’ll always remember the no-frills cuisine that his mother served.

“She didn’t go to cooking school or anything like that,” he said. “Mary’s mother used to help at the [original] restaurant across the street. It was basically just what they made at home.”

Tell us: Do you have a special memory of Mary Chung Restaurant? Let us know what the restaurant meant to you. Include your thoughts in the form below or send us an e-mail at [email protected]. Your response may be used in an upcoming Boston.com article and/or social media channels.

Tell us: Do you have a special memory of Mary Chung Restaurant?

Your name may be published.
Your neighborhood/town may be published.
What are your preferred pronouns?

Please select your preferred pronoun so we may correctly refer to your response in an article.
Please enter an email address and/or phone number that we can easily contact you with. We may reach out for more information. It will NOT be published.
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

To comment, please create a screen name in your profile