People have asked me about the name of my restaurant, Lin and Daughters. The name is inspired by my dad, a retired, and my two amazing girls. I dedicated it to my dad because he dedicated his entire life to us. I’ll share his story and our special relationship here.

 

The first memory I have of my is from when I was 9 years old. He wanted to create a better life for his wife, daughters, and son, so he left our home in rural China when I was only 5 years old. I was too young to remember him leaving. I have many memories of longing for his return after he was gone Every month, we would eagerly wait by the phone at our town center (we didn’t have our own phone back then) for his call. At 5 years old, I didn’t have the vocabulary to express the feeling of “losing” my dad so suddenly or make sense of the changes. My mom was left alone the kids, including a newborn. It wasn’t until much later in life that I realized how deeply it impacted my development.

 

After a while, I got used to not having my dad around, but I never stopped on to the promise he’d made to me—that he’d come back to bring us to the States, or as we called it, “Mei Guo,” which literally translates to “the beautiful country”. 

 

As you can see in all the pictures taken in China, my middle sister was never in of them. To digress, she was given up for adoption of China’s one-child policy, which meant families, especially in rural areas were expected to have a. My parents had me first and then two more girls after. They had no choice but to give the other daughters up for adoption. We were lucky to get my middle sister, Lili, back when she was 9 years old, but we never got to meet our younger sister. I also wanted Lin and Daughters to pay homage to all the daughters who couldn’t be with their parents for similar reasons.

 

When I was 9, my mom told me one day that we were going to the airport with my extended family to pick up my dad. I ecstatic, to say the least. When we got there, I must have fallen asleep because when I woke, the car felt a little extra full and lively. I asked mom if we were getting close to the airport. Everyone started laughing and told me that we were actually on our way home. I started crying because I thought my dad hadn’t made it home, but then I heard the familiar voice saying “Baba is here.” That when I finally realized the person sitting across from me was my dad. To my surprise, he looked nothing like the dad I remembered. He had lost all his hair and grown a big beer belly. He looked bloated and tired but cheerful. He was so familiar a stranger to me. I was happy he made it back home, but sad that the dad I had constructed all these years looked nothing like the person in front of me.

 

I later found out that my dad was able to come back because he had just granted legal status by the US government. For the few weeks he there, my parents began preparing for their move to the USA, which included relocating their lost daughters. My middle sister, Lili, came home soon after. We located our younger sister, whom we had never met, but adoptive parents to meet us. We later heard from a mutual family friend that she was well loved and living a good life.

 

Three years later, found myself preparing to leave my hometown for the USA. Before I in the car to leave, my cousin started crying and said, “I won’t you for at least 10 years As we drove past green fields of sprouting rice plants, I knew I was heading for a new beginning while saying to an entire life—everyone I knew and had ever known.

 

We arrived JFK the next night. I was mesmerized by the lights in the darkness, but New York also felt oddly cold, sterile, and foreign. Once we at our apartment in Sunset Park, the reality of a difficult life began to hit me, and I cried myself to sleep that night. The next day, my dad took us around Manhattan including a stop under the Manhattan Bridge on Canal St to shop for cheap groceries to celebrate our first dinner together. The dinner turned out to be a feast. As we crowded around the table having this amazing dinner, my dad told us that this was the kind of food would make at a fancyese restaurant in Chinatown when he worked as a. This was the first time I realized he had been a chef. The food was somehow entirely familiar yet unlike anything I had ever tasted. In that dark basement, I knew we were poor. I knew I couldn’t speak the language. I knew the road ahead would be hard. But with my family reunited around the table, I felt whole, I felt like I belonged, and I felt rich.

 

After a year in Brooklyn, parents took a leap of faith and bought a small takeout restaurant in a quaint little town on Long Island. None of us spoke English, and besides my dad, none of us had stepped inside a restaurant kitchen. The school we attended was populated with many immigrant children like myself. We weren’t interacting much with anyone outside our little Brooklyn Chinese circle. There wasn’t much communication about how were going to do it or how much I would be involved. A cousin who spoke English came to help for the first month as the cashier/phone person, and after that, it my job for the next five years. It was a huge responsibility, but I never questioned why we were doing it. It either that or continue living in our rat-infested basement apartment.

 

When we arrived, we were the only Chinese family in town, and no one spoke our language. It was immersive as you could get. Although the first few months, I had to do a lot of signing and use context/body language to help understand the customers, many of whom were kind and understanding. For the next five years I would go to school, work at the restaurant, study, sleep, and repeat. Like my parents, there wasn’t one day I wasn’t working. Thanksgiving became my favorite holiday it was the day we closed the restaurant.

 

As many of my classmates started to go through their rebellious phase by partying and drinking, outlet was studying as hard as possible It started when my mom, in an effort to comfort me, told me not to care too much about my grades because they expected me to get married soon after high school, have kids, and help my husband with his restaurant. Unknown to her, that was my worst nightmare. So I tried to escape the only way I knew how—by going to college. The experience of being a restaurant kid, combined with my perfect rebellious grades paid off, and now I have the privilege of being a Dartmouth College alumna.

 

During my senior year of college, my parents were presented with an opportunity to open another restaurant. They envisioned a Chinese and Japanese Asian fusion place that would need to be built from scratch. Since I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pursue medical school as originally planned, I agreed to graduate early and help them for a couple of years while using the time to figure out my career path. My dad took charge of the kitchen while I managed the front of the house. I resumed the schedule of working seven days a week and learned a tremendous amount from both my dad and my Japanese chef/friend,ny. The cleanliness of Japanese food and the balance of Chinese food has since become the guiding principles of my cooking.

 

While the restaurant was a huge, I didn’t make any time for myself or figure out what was next. After a while, my mental health started to deteriorate, and I stayed awake many nights, anxious about being trapped in a life I didn’t want and asking myself why I went to college if only to return to my old life. My relationship my family began to deteriorate as I sank into depression and insomnia.

 

In 2008, my parents and I finally agreed that it was best for me to leave the family business. I moved to NYC and tried different jobs, eventually falling in love with teaching Chinese to kids. With my parents’ support, I bought a language school called Lango and ran it for almost years until it was shuttered by the pandemic.

 

For the next two years, I stayed home to care for my newborn and toddler and rekindle my love for food and cooking. When an opportunity arose to sell my food online (via Shef), I jumped it. After hundreds of meals and positive reviews, I was ready to take it to the next level.

 

In the spring of 2022, I finally gained enough courage (thanks to my @ordershef experience and the support of family and friends) to open a restaurant. However, I underestimated the commercial estate game in NYC. Many calls were left unanswered. Brokers didn’t know what to make of me. Many were but skeptical; some were blatantly sexist and racist. For example, one of the landlords had had an experience with another Asian tenant who obtained the lease just to reassign it to someone else for and was so convinced that I would do the same that he refused to proceed after we spent weeks discussing, agreeing to the final terms, and signing the lease on our end.

 

After months of searching, failing, and restarting, we finally found the perfect space to open Lin and Daughters. In January 2023, we opened our doors in the West Village. Following the success of our first location, we proudly opened our second in Flatiron/Nomad in October 2025. Thank you - past and present - for your support. This journey has truly been a dream come true. 

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Best,

Becky Lin