Teppan Bowl owner, Lee Vue with her son Lee Vang (pictured left) and sister Per Xiong (pictured right). The restaurant is family-owned and operated. Photo by Ben Hensley

When Lee Vue opened her first restaurant, she didn’t expect to have to shut down soon after.

She opened Japanese eatery Teppan Bowl on Saturday, March 14, 2020. By Tuesday, the City of Clovis ordered restaurants to shut down dine-in service in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Teppan Bowl operated with overturned chairs on table tops for a full year and a half — sticking it out when other eateries didn’t.

“Luckily, all the restaurants had closed, and mine was the only one open,” she said.

Turning what seemed to be a disaster into a blessing, Vue said many of her returning customers were first responders. Offering curbside pick up was a catalyst for the restaurant’s success.

Now, more than three years later, Teppan Bowl remains a popular Clovis eatery, offering teppanyaki-style cuisine, sushi and Japanese sandwiches for both curbside pick up, dine-in and take out options.

Surviving the pandemic wasn’t the only challenge Vue and Teppan Bowl have overcome. The Crossroads Shopping Center, located at the corners of Bullard and Minnewawa avenues, has recently seen a resurgence of storefronts, with local bar and board game stop Beer for the Meeples among several to open in the past few years.

Vue said that when she opened in 2020, there were only a handful of neighbors in the shopping center.

“At night when I was trying to go home, there was nobody here,” she said. “But since I’ve moved in, everybody has moved in.”

Teppan Bowl is operated largely by family. Vue’s daughter and three of her sons have worked at the restaurant, even leaving higher-paying jobs to help  the family business.

Vue’s love for food stems from her personal experience with cooking, acting as the family chef for family gatherings and former coworkers.

“Every time we do something — a potluck, Thanksgiving, family gatherings — my family says, ‘you should open your own restaurant,’” Vue said. “It never crossed my mind that one day I was going to open a restaurant.”

With wait times climbing as high as an hour on Fridays and weekends, the community support hasn’t dwindled for the small business.

Teppan Bowl is located at 50 W. Bullard Ave. #111 in Clovis, and is open from 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday. They are closed on Sunday.