LOS ANGELES _ In a restaurant rising from an overgrown parking lot at 91st Street and Central Avenue, fried chicken, chow mein and the occasional fist bump pass through holes cut in panes of bulletproof glass.
Behind the glass is a Cambodian immigrant family, and on the other side is the chain's mostly black clientele. Bean pies and sweet potatoes are on the menu. So are whole pickled jalapenos.
The restaurant, part of the Louisiana Famous Fried Chicken chain, is a Southern California cultural mix tape: fried chicken, served by Cambodian refugees to black and Latino customers, from a chain founded by a white man from Michigan, Joseph Dion.
Dion started the chain in South Los Angeles in 1976, and it now has more than 148 restaurants in seven states and three countries. A big reason for the chain's success, Dion said, is Cambodians.
More than 80 percent of the franchises are owned by Cambodian-Americans. They work hard, have never sued Dion and run many franchises as family businesses, enlisting sons, daughters and cousins for labor and paying themselves what was left over.
The franchise owners _ many of them refugees _ shared an understanding of poverty and struggle with the neighborhoods in which they are located. And they are frugal, getting by on far fewer profits than their competitors, turning survival into a bona fide business strategy, said Michael Eng, a Cambodian refugee who recently took over the entire chain. "If there is a Kentucky Fried Chicken on one corner, a Church's on another and Popeye's on the third one, I will open a Louisiana chicken on the fourth. I will try," said Eng, 46.
Dion came to Los Angeles from Michigan in 1957 with nothing in his pockets and an inclination to work in restaurants. He managed a now-defunct chain buffet called Sir George's Smorgasbord House and worked his way up to manager at two Jack in the Box restaurants in Orange County before deciding to launch his own chain.
After a month in his garage with a 30-pound fryer, experimenting with a recipe he says he obtained from New Orleans chef Paul Prudhomme, he arrived at a product: chicken in a zesty Cajun batter fried to a soft crunch and finished with a slight, spicy heat.
