Wichita restaurant owner who’d long been planning her retirement dies at 62
Almost two years ago, Asian Wok owners Mike and Yook Gan were trying to slow down after working 25 years in the restaurant industry. They wanted to travel more, and they were a day away from departing on a long-anticipated trip back to Taiwan, where they planned to revisit the college where they first met.
Then, they got the call. Yook had an aggressive form of breast cancer.
They took the trip as planned, traveling across Japan and South Korea. When they returned home, Yook began an almost two-year battle against the disease, which ended when she died on Aug. 2 at age 62.
“She was determined to beat the cancer and was hoping she would, just because she’s always been a fighter,” her daughter Stacy Gould said. “She was the healthiest person.”
The couple closed Asian Wok in early July, once the cancer treatments stopped working and doctors said they could do nothing more. Now, Yook’s husband of more than 40 years and her two grown children — Stacy, 37, and Jeslee Gan, 27 — are mourning a woman who was also loved by many of her restaurant’s regulars.
Stacy said that the family has been overwhelmed with kindness from customers, many of who followed the couple through the various restaurants they owned over the years, most famously Cafe Asia, which operated in the corner of Normandie Center for 20 years.
Mike Gan will likely reopen the restaurant, his daughter, said, but he’s not sure when. The Gans had put the restaurant on the market a while ago, and Mike wants to keep it running until he finds a buyer.
Per Yook’s wishes, the family will open the restaurant from 2 to 6 p.m. on Sept. 6, when they’ll host a celebration of life for Yook that friends and customers are invited to attend. But the restaurant won’t be serving food that day.
“My mom wanted everything to be simple,” Stacy said. “She was not one who liked the spotlight on her.”
Together in work and life
Both Mike and Yook Gan grew up in the southern part of Malaysia and met at college in Taiwan. They moved to Wichita in 1984 so Mike could continue studying computer science. After he got a job in that field, Yook decided she wanted to start a restaurant.
They opened Malaysia Cafe at 7777 E. 21st St. in 1998, and it became so busy that Mike left his day job to help Yook at the restaurant.
They sold Malaysia Cafe in 2000 and opened a restaurant called Malaysian Cuisine in Derby. About that time, the couple also helped Mike’s brother open a restaurant in Normandie Center, which was called Malaysian Cuisine II. But after a couple of years, the brother decided he wanted out of the business, so Mike and Yook took it over and renamed it Cafe Asia. The sit-down restaurant was famous for dishes like salt and pepper chicken, Char Kuew Teow, and roti — a Malaysian pan fried bread served with curry sauce.
Cafe Asia’s fans were devastated when the Gans announced in 2020 that they were closing the restaurant, then delighted when they learned that the couple was planning something new. The Gans downsized and opened the quick-service Asian Wok at 2929 N. Rock Road in February 2021, serving a mix of Cafe Asia favorites and new dishes they’d developed.
The couple said at the time that they planned to get the restaurant on its feet then step away in five years to travel and enjoy retirement. But they did not get the chance.
Yook continued to work in the restaurant until the end of June.
Stacy, a seventh-grade math teacher at Wichita Collegiate School, said she’ll remember her mother as a giver. She was generous with her family and with her customers.
When Stacy earned a master’s degree from the University of Kansas a couple of years ago, she said, her mother showed up with a big box. When Stacy opened it, it was filled with Starbucks “You Are Here” mugs, which Stacy collected. For a year, Yook had been asking customers and anyone she knew to pick them up and bring them back when they traveled so that she could give them to her daughter as a graduation gift.
Stacy also remembers that Yook would always bring back coins from her travels so that she could give them to a customer who collected foreign currency.
“She was always just thinking of everyone else but her,” she said.
Yook loved to travel, and she and her husband traversed the United States and Europe, always trying new food. She also had an amazing memory and often already knew what customers would order when she saw their phone numbers pop up on caller ID.
Stacy said that her mother and father were also private people. Only recently did Stacy even learn when their wedding anniversary was. The couple also never posted pictures of themselves to promote their restaurant.
As word has started to spread about her mother’s death, Stacy said, the family is beginning to grasp just how cherished Yook was by her customers. Stacy, who worked at Cafe Asia from the time she was a teenager until she started her own career, said she recently answered a call at the restaurant from a longtime customer who wanted to place a catering order. Stacy had to share the news with him that her mother was gone.
“You could just hear how devastated he was,” Stacy said. “I guess we didn't realize how much my mom had touched everyone. It was just really overwhelming, in a good way.”
The family will be at the come-and-go celebration of life at the restaurant on Sept. 6 to greet people who want to pay their respects, Stacy said. They plan to ask people to write down memories of Yook on cards they will provide, and then Mike will read them in his own time.
Yook is survived by her husband and two children and also by her grandchild, Ethan Gould, and her son-in-law, Josh Gould.
The family has asked for no flowers or fruit baskets and encourages people instead to donate to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Yook’s name.
This story was originally published August 14, 2025 at 1:45 PM.
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