Lina Fat’s funeral fills downtown Sacramento cathedral as mourners remember restaurateur

Lina Fat was laid to rest the way she lived: surrounded by a full house of family and friends in her adopted hometown of Sacramento.

The longtime restaurateur’s funeral Monday morning filled the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in downtown Sacramento. Fat, who was 81 years old when she died Nov. 25, was the driving force behind Fat Family Restaurant Group and its longstanding area Chinese-American eateries for decades.

Former Gov. Jerry Brown, Congresswoman Doris Matsui and Mayor Darrell Steinberg eulogized Fat while business contemporaries such as Russell Okubo, Randall Selland, Taro Arai, Patrick Mulvaney and Randy Paragary sat in the pews below.

Each speaker touched on Fat’s generous spirit, which was on display even in death. Each funeral attendee received a small pink envelope with a card inside bearing a recipe for Immigrant’s Beef, a longtime favorite at Frank Fat’s restaurant, along with a picture of Lina in Hawaii.

Family members such as J.C. Fat, Lina’s son, recalled her loving side while noting her toughness. J.C. was hired as a teenage dishwasher at Frank Fat’s, but auditioned to become a waiter. The final test was to serve lunch to the restaurant’s most knowledgeable customer, Lina.

He thought he had done well by greeting her, getting her water and and rattling off the day’s specials. Then Lina asked her 18-year-old son, whom she knew didn’t drink, what wine would go well with her meal. He froze.

The lesson, she later shared at his performance review, was that it was OK not to know an answer, J.C. said. He needed to better appreciate the talents around him and seek help when needed.

Fat had stood at the same microphone three months earlier, still recovering from minor heart surgery, to eulogize her friend, Biba Caggiano. The Rev. Michael Moynihan joked that they were probably “preparing the mother of all gastronomical banquets” together in heaven. The rest of the audience settled for a reception at Fat City in Old Sacramento, which recently closed to the public but remains owned by the family.

At Lina’s final public engagement, a She Shares “Women In Business” conference in October, J.C. said she made an odd, unsettling comment about not having anything left and not knowing what to do.

She later clarified the statement, J.C. said. The restaurant group was in the hands of her son, Kevin, and brother-in-law, Jerry, and she knew the family would take care of each other.

For the first time in a long time, Lina Fat had no real obligations remaining.