Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Chinese Kosher Restaurant Stays Open Despite Bathroom Peeping Scandal

(JTA) — A kosher restaurant in suburban Boston will be allowed to remain open even though one of its owners has been charged with illegally recording his customers as they used the bathroom.

Owner Tze Chung, 63, who owns the popular Taam China restaurant in Brookline, Massachusetts, may have recorded customers up to 20 separate times beginning as early as 2015.

The Select Board of the town of Brookline, last month agreed to allow Taam China to keep its restaurant license during a meeting to discuss whether or not to shut the kosher restaurant down.

Among the conditions needed to be met to keep the restaurant open is that Taam China must hire a new manager, and that Chung may not visit the restaurant. The restaurant must come before the Select Board in two months and present its   reorganization and ownership status.

The charges against Chung were levied last month after he was charged in May in the rape of a 12-year-old girl. Chung, who has run the restaurant for 20 years, is accused of primarily recording a waitress at the restaurant whom he used to see romantically, according to The Boston Globe. She did not know she was being recorded. He is out on bail and must wear a GPS bracelet.

The restaurant’s chef, Tai-Sheng Ying, owns a 50 percent stake in the business.

Members of the Jewish community came to the meeting to support Taam China, since there are few kosher restaurants in the area.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.