At Yenching Palace, Five Decades of History to Go

"Kissinger has a mesmerizing voice," Chow says. "It just carries. There would be 100 people in here and you knew he was here."

Van Lung, the original owner, could be a helpful source of information to journalists, who also considered the place a hangout. Perhaps at their peril, upon occasion. Scott Armstrong, a former Washington Post reporter and longtime customer, once got a call from a source at the FBI after he took someone from Kissinger's office to Yenching. Armstrong was told, as a favor, to never again interview sources in the first booth, the one next to the office.

"That's what I want -- the first booth," says Armstrong, who lives in the neighborhood and still comes in, though he bemoans the fact that the duck doesn't drip as much fat as it used to. "We can rip it out and check for the wires."

For all its famous customers, though, Yenching was always a family restaurant.

"When the kids were still around, we used to go there a lot," says New Yorker writer Seymour Hersh, who remembers Van Lung introducing him to the man who served as an interpreter for the Cuban Missile Crisis negotiations. "It stayed the same. Everybody else got yuppified. We're very fancy here [in Cleveland Park] now. I live in Yuppieland."

Once the only restaurant on its block, Yenching is now within walking distance of hip, popular restaurants like Ardeo and Bardeo, Palena, Spices and Indique. Meanwhile, behind its unchanged storefront, the original faux leather booths -- "whatever it is, it lasted!" Chow says -- still exist, and there's still a phone booth in the entryway, though hardly anyone uses it anymore.

But that's all going to go, Larry Lung says. He is effusive in thanking all his long-term customers and neighbors, and is torn by those who have called or stopped by recently to bemoan Yenching's demise. Still, it's time.

So maybe Lung will keep some of the Chinese artifacts that decorate the room, maybe he'll sell some. In any case, soon folks won't be coming in for the beloved noodle soup, with its hot broth and the raw meat to be cooked at the table. They'll be coming in asking where they can find the cough medicine.