While in China, another 'Hungry Horse' is revealed

On a recent trip to China, Bob Brown came across a restaurant that was very close to home.

Brown, the former Montana Secretary of State and state Senator was in China doing a series of guest lectures on American politics and the current electoral year at Nankai University in Tianjin.

Brown and retired University of Montana professor Harry Fritz spent 24 days delivering lectures and touring the country.

On their last night in Beijing before returning home, Brown and Fritz, along with a colleague at Nankai, Professor Han, went to dinner.

“Han said, we found a western restaurant, and we thought you might want a western meal,” Brown said.

The name of the restaurant? The Hungry Horse Cafe.

Noticing the coincidence, Brown and Fritz asked their waiter to flag down the head waitress so that they could ask about the name of the restaurant.

The head waitress, Jinye Kim, said that the man who established the restaurant “named it after a dam in Montana.”

“I asked her how this place got its name, and that’s what she told me,” Brown said last week. “She had no idea where I was from.”

The Hungry Horse Cafe in China serves American food, including wings, waffles, pasta dishes outside of the usual Chinese noodles, sandwiches, and barbecue, and also offers some Mexican fare.

Brown got a burger.

“It was a real hamburger, not like one I had gotten before,” he said. “The Hungry Horse was a really good place.”