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Margaret Kuo's Peking in Granite Run Mall closes

This was to be expected, as the mall near Media will be demolished and redeveloped.

Imagine owning a restaurant for 41 years.

In a mall.

Margaret Kuo's Peking - which gave many Delaware Countians their first taste of true Mandarin and Sichuan cuisine when it opened in Granite Run Mall in 1974 - has closed.

This was to be expected, as the mall near Media will be demolished and redeveloped.

The last day was May 16, Warren Kuo, the founder's husband, said.

Margaret Kuo was born in Manchuria, raised in Taiwan, and educated at the University of Connecticut. She traded a career as a chemist at Allied Chemical for the restaurant life after her husband was asked to help run a relative's restaurant near Philadelphia. (See backgrounder here.)

The Granite Run restaurant - a two-beller from Inquirer critic Craig LaBan - was a springboard for an empire of Chinese (and later, also Japanese) restaurants in the western burbs.

Right now, there's the posh Margaret Kuo in Wayne (a three-beller from LaBan), Margaret Kuo's in Media (which recently acquired a customized Peking duck oven), and Margaret Kuo's Mandarin in Frazer.