San Francisco in the late 1960s was a place for lovers, poets, and peace-makers. Positivity and goodwill were as omnipresent as the fog, and people were greeted with open arms and rosy cheeks. Unless, of course, you were on the second story of Sam Wo Restaurant in the heart of Chinatown.
Past steaming woks and chopping blocks and up a narrow, creaky staircase, Edsel Ford Fong — the world’s most insulting waiter — greeted patrons with a “sit down and shut up!†Routinely, he cussed out his customers, sexually accosted female companions, and unapologetically spilled soup across laps. According to one diner, he was so malicious that he “made the Soup Nazi look like the Dalai Lama.â€