PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Officials say they’ve identified what caused excessive amounts of steam to fill the basement of Sang Kee Peking Duck House in Chinatown, causing the Department of Licenses and Inspections to shut the business down temporarily last week.
The restaurant, on 9th Street, near Vine Street, reopened on Saturday in time for the holidays, which is typically one of its busiest times. Henry Chow, general manager, says they haven’t quite seen the traffic they were expecting yet, but Christmas is typically a huge day for Sang Kee.
“First couple days, it was still like: Ah, not everyone really knew yet. So we’re hoping for a big bounce this week. You know, it’s a big family gathering spot for Philadelphians and we’re so happy that we can be able to cook them food and let them have a good time.
Vicinity Energy, which operates steam pipes below Sang Kee and much of Chinatown, said in a statement that it was not a steam pipe leak. Rather, they say, the vapor at Sang Kee was the result of water from a neighboring building’s service line coming into contact with Vicinity’s pipes.
Henry Chow, general manager of Sang Kee, which his family has run since 1980, said he has not heard confirmation of that being the definitive root cause, but he says there’s much less steam seeping into the basement and billowing out onto the sidewalk out front.
“At the moment, the steam and the water and the moisture has really abated in our basement, which is amazing. It really creates a much safer environment, obviously, for us to operate,” Chow said.
“It’s definitely a lot better these days, but you can still feel it’s a little bit warm.”
It’s also unusually humid, so the restaurant has two dehumidifiers running 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Chow was scrambling for solutions during the weeklong shutdown.
“It was really stressful. It was hard to sleep, it was hard to eat, because I was trying to figure out what was in front of my face the whole time,” Chow said.
“We employ lots of really great people and it was really critical they’d be able to work during this busy time and they’d get paid.”
And as Chow welcomes back the Christmas crowd, he says he’s thankful for the flood of support he saw from community members who were saddened by the prospect of forgoing a 44-year Chinatown tradition.
“Someone told me the other day, ‘If you didn’t know where you stood in the eyes of Philadelphians before, you definitely know now,’” he said.
At the time of publication, requests for comment from the Philadelphia Water Department were unanswered.