Please note that location entries may feature older photos or post card views that may not represent the current appearance, features, addresses, phone numbers, or contact names of the attraction. This site is intended to be a historical as well as current record of various attractions but it is not always possible to have up-to-date information due to the vast number of locations featured here. We ask you consult the propietor for current information.
When I saw the postcard for Victor Lim's I thought this would be a basic post about a long-gone Detroit Restaurant like so many others. Well, I was wrong. Lim was the unofficial "Mayor of Chinatown" in Detroit. He had quite a life as is documented here and elsewhere. There is a Lim's as of 2023 in Sterling Heights that has no relation to Victor Lim's in Detroit as far as I know.
From D Tour 313:
It was on this date, Nov. 16, 1950, proprietor, Victor Lim (1902-1970) first opened the doors to his legendary namesake restaurant located at 48 W. Adams, facing Grand Circus Park. It had taken years of hardship to achieve this level of success in his beloved Detroit, but his resiliency, heart-felt charm to please his guests and love for the Chinese food and exotic cocktails he served, made it inevitable.
His life read like a dramatic novel. Born in his native China in 1902, he would arrive in the U.S. in 1916, settling in Detroit’s old Chinatown district (west of downtown, south of Michigan Ave. centered along Third St.). In 1924 he would return to China where he would marry his childhood sweetheart, Mae Jean. In early 1926 Victor would leave for Detroit to prepare a home for his new family. By the time he arrived he received word that he would become a father, strengthening his resolve all the more.
Time went by and after years of furiously working he had almost enough money for both a restaurant and to send for his wife and his young son (Buck Yick Lim), when the Depression hit. Though financially hurt and heart-broken, he was determined and kept working, hoping one day to bring his family home to Detroit. As he would run his restaurants (“Cafe Orient” on Cass Ave. by the Leland Hotel and later the “Oriental Quarters Restaurant” on Third St. in Chinatown) he and Mae Jean would continue to write to each other. Through the Japanese invasion of China in 1936 to the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. Then the letters from his wife stopped. In 1942 he would discover she had been killed at the hands of the Japanese Army during their occupation, while his son managed to escape by joining the Chinese Navy. Buck Yick would serve the remainder of WWII, getting married and starting a family of his own. Victor Lim somehow managed to press on, later remarrying in 1951 to Katie Lim, a widow and Detroit resident who had the distinction of being the first Chinese woman to graduate from Wayne State University’s pharmacy program.
After countless agonizing years, it would be through the efforts of senators, judges, city officials as well as his wife, Katie (who would fly to Hong Kong to finalize the details) to allow passage for the son, daughter-in-law and grand children Victor had never met. On May 25, 1955, at Willow Run Airport, after 29 years of waiting, a joyful Victor Lim finally had his family back.
During it’s heyday, Victor Lim’s 48 W. Adams restaurant would see enormous success. Being a mainstay for luncheons for the nearby business community as well as the after-movie crowd for drinks and dinner from the neighboring theaters (Adams, Fox, Palms and Broadway Capital). It was a prime, walk-able spot offering unique Asian cuisine like no other downtown, and Victor knew it. His son, Buck Yick (1926-2020), would formally change his name to his father’s to Victor Lim, Jr. and run the restaurant as assistant manager until later taking over as his father’s successor in later years.
In 1984, after a lengthy decline in business, Victor Lim’s would close it’s doors for good. Many decades have passed and although all that remains is the exterior facade of the Fine Arts Building where the restaurant was once housed, Victor Lim’s spirit lives on in the people who remember the endearing man, his family and their iconic restaurant.