Number One Chinese Restaurant

You've got Jimmy Han, resenting the small and windowless Chinese restaurant his father once ran.
Jimmy's partnered with a hustling real estate agent to sell his mother's home and open a fancier fusion joint downtown. But his mother thinks otherwise and his not-quite-Uncle Pang is making moves of his own that involve the son of one of Jimmy's long standing waitresses of 30 years who is trying to unravel the nature of her relationship with her aged, and also married, co-worker whose wife is struggling with a cancer diagnosis. That's maybe 2/3rds of the actual plot points bandied about in this tragi-comedy about a uniquely American family and the swirling ecosystem of the Beijing Duck House. It's a lot to take in.

Every town across North America has it's requisite Chinese restaurant that you barely think about as you sit down and order your General Tso's chicken on plastic covered tables with Asian zodiac placemats. Lillian Li lets us poke our head behind the kitchen doors and spy the generational toil and drama that fuels these establishments and shows how uniquely Asian-American these stories are.