Howard Wang’s China Grill represents family's 38-year legacy of Chinese restaurants

The restaurant business is a family affair for Jowin Wang. Named after his father, Howard Wang’s China Grill opened at The Star in Frisco in 2018 and represents the 38-year legacy of the Wang family’s Chinese restaurants in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

“It’s a family business,” Wang said. “[My father and] his mom were in the business; my mom was in the business; my aunts—they were all in the business together.”

Howard Wang’s China Grill serves “modern” Americanized Chinese food, Wang said. The menu offers dim sum; salads and wraps; entrées; fried rice dishes; and broth and stir fry noodles.

Jowin’s father opened the first Howard Wang’s China Grill in Dallas’ Preston Hollow in 2005, he said. It was a new concept under his father’s brand. Wang said his father ran another Chinese restaurant called Empress of China, which had a location in Valley Ranch across the street from the former Dallas Cowboys headquarters.

The next Howard Wang’s China Grill restaurants would come along in 2011 in Uptown Dallas and 2013 in Southlake, Wang said.

The family of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones frequented the Uptown location, Wang said. Jones later asked for Howard Wang’s China Grill to open at The Star in Frisco, he said.

“We kind of felt like it was fate that brought us together here because we’re at the Cowboys’ headquarters again,” Wang said. “It really has come full circle.”

Once Wang caught wind of Frisco’s fast growth and development, he knew The Star location was the right fit, he said.

“We saw opportunity with that,” he said, “and we just saw how much they were developing around here, all the headquarters that were coming.”