Most people go to Kaifeng, the legendary kosher Chinese restaurant north of London, for outstanding Chinese cuisine. However, a small minority go there for something much more important – an opportunity to save their own lives.
Norman Han, 80, co-owner of Kaifeng, is twice a cancer survivor and says that the restaurant has been a lifesaver for him because it gives him the opportunity to save the lives of others.
Han went into the restaurant business in 1958, working for a decade at the Hilton on Park Lane in London. He left the Hilton chain when he realized he did not want to join the team of employees to open up other properties, traveling from city to city, across continental Europe, even to Hong Kong.
That life seemed too transitory for him, so he went into the business world instead. After initial success, a major deal went south, which left him with little to do and no strong sense of purpose.
“I was taking very poor care of myself back then,” he recalls. “I was definitely compromising my health – smoking constantly and so on.”
Han opened one of the first restaurants in London’s Chinatown in the mid-1960s, and then in 1967, he opened Kaifeng. His first mashgiach (kashrut supervisor) was a legendary rabbi who, as part of the Allied Armed Forces, had helped to liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
“We would meet for two hours every week,” Han recalls fondly. “I would listen to his stories about Bergen-Belsen. He treated me like a son, and I treated him like a father.”
Han credits those experiences learning from his mashgiach as a means of understanding his newfound Jewish clientele.
“When I opened the restaurant,” Han says, “it hadn’t been too many years since the Holocaust had ended. So I was able to sit with my customers and listen carefully and understand the stories they were telling me about what some of them had endured.”
Longevity is in Han’s DNA, and Kaifeng’s, too. Most of the staff has worked there for more than 20 years, and the most recent hire joined the company 18 years ago.
“I treat them like family,” Han says. “I listen to their problems; I help where I can. It’s not just a job for them.”
In January, during Chinese New Year, Han and his team celebrated the 37th anniversary of the opening of the restaurant. Because he has certificates of kashrut from both the Orthodox and hassidic beit din, pretty much all of Jewish London eats in his restaurant.
“More than 80 rabbis eat here,” he says proudly. “Most nights, you see Orthodox and secular Jews eating here until about nine o’clock. Then the place turns mostly hassidic. I’m proud to say that everyone trusts our kashrut. The beit din calls me an ‘honorary Jew’ – I’m proud of that!”
IN 2020, when COVID struck, Han decided to keep the restaurant open and focus on his takeaway business. Although the British government offered a plan that would pay a large portion of the salaries of suspended workers, Han kept everyone on his staff at full salary, which he paid out of his own pocket.
And then comes the sense of mission beyond serving great kosher Chinese food.
Can this legendary kosher Chinese food in London cure cancer?
Prior to COVID, Han was diagnosed with cancer, and he initially went the Western medicine route. Radiation therapy did nothing for him, and he was essentially told to go home and await his unfortunate fate.
Han wanted no part of that. Instead, he pieced together a formula for restoring himself to health, based on what he had read in The Economist, the British news magazine, and conversations with cancer survivors. He put together a concoction that contained turmeric, certain vegetables, and black grapes. After drinking that beverage twice a day, he soon found himself cancer-free.
“I was treated at the top cancer hospital in London,” he says. “Back then, they had signs on the walls as you entered. One said that they followed the latest medical advances in cancer treatment. The other said that they were open to whatever personal treatments or strategies that patients might want to follow. I’m not sure they really believed that second statement, though.
“If doctors don’t have everything peer-reviewed and tested, and if it doesn’t involve pharmaceuticals, they don’t trust it. I’m not going to say I knew better, but they couldn’t cure my cancer, and what I took seemed to have a very powerful effect.”
Norman Han
“If doctors don’t have everything peer-reviewed and tested, and if it doesn’t involve pharmaceuticals, they don’t trust it. I’m not going to say I knew better, but they couldn’t cure my cancer, and what I took seemed to have a very powerful effect.”
In the years since, word has spread about Han’s approach to treating serious illness. People started going to the restaurant from Great Britain, Europe, Israel, and the US in search of a cure.
“The Americans always ask me for guarantees,” he says, laughing. “I always ask them, ‘What kind of guarantee did your doctor give you? He only guaranteed to accept his fee!’”
Han says that he has been responsible for “hundreds and hundreds” of recoveries. He sees the restaurant not just as a business endeavor but as an opportunity to spread the message and save lives.
“The restaurant is the place where I’m able to spread the word about what I believe,” Han says. “I’m not expecting that everyone in the world will believe me. Most doctors don’t believe me! On the other hand, I’ve actually helped two oncologists who had been told they were terminally ill. So, who’s to say?”
Does Han’s recipe really cure serious illness? That’s a question that individuals will have to decide for themselves. The medical community will almost certainly tell you it’s not true. On the other hand, the medical community doesn’t pretend to know everything.
“I just wish doctors would keep an open mind,” Han says about his alternative medicine approach. “There’s a Chinese proverb: It doesn’t matter what the cat looks like, as long as it catches mice.”