Story: Marina Gordon

In “The Meaning of Food,” we meet the Chou family, who for more than 20 years owned a Chinese restaurant in Columbia, Missouri. The Chou parents had emigrated from Taiwan and given up their professions to open the restaurant and care for their three children, who worked daily in the eatery and considered it their second home. The eldest Chou child, Hsiao-Ching, left Missouri after college to start her own career in food writing; her two brothers, Sam and David Jr., stayed with the family business until their parents decided to retire in 2003. Here we revisit the Chous to see how their lives have changed since the restaurant closed.