Food-Loving ‘Fresh Off the Boat’ Actor Hudson Yang Invests in First LA Restaurant

Child actor Hudson Yang can add another title to his quickly growing resume: restaurant investor. Yang, who plays the lead on the ABC show Fresh Off the Boat, announced himself last week as a partner in new West LA venture Khong Ten, which opened in August.

For those unfamiliar, Yang is a 15-year-old child television star with a following on social media and beyond. He’s also an avowed lover of restaurants and food, even starting a standalone YouTube cooking and eating series called Taste Test back in 2016. It helps that Yang’s Fresh Off the Boat series, a loose adaptation of chef/restaurateur Eddie Huang’s memoir of the same title, is rather food-focused as well, including previous season’s trips to places like the Shilin Night Market in Taipei, Taiwan.

Last week, Yang announced on social media that he had chosen to put some of his TV money into Khong Ten, a new modern Vietnamese restaurant along Pico Boulevard in West LA. The upscale casual restaurant primarily comes from Kim Vu of Vucacious Catering, and Don Andes, longtime bar owner of places like Little Joy and The Holloway in Echo Park. Reached for comment, Vu confirmed Yang’s involvement, as well as that of his father, journalist Jeff Yang.

Of course, celebrities investing in and spending time at restaurants is nothing new. After all, just look at actor Chris O’Donnell and his wife Caroline’s passion project Pizzana in Brentwood (and soon West Hollywood). But the move is of particular note given Yang’s age and already well-documented love of food, not to mention his role as the lead character on a currently-running major network sitcom that is the first to feature an Asian-American family in two decades.

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