The Wong family have been at the helm of one of Northern Ireland's most popular Chinese restaurants for the past 40 years.
The Welcome has been a staple on the Stranmillis Road in South Belfast since its takeaway first opened in 1981, followed quickly by a sit-in restaurant down the street one year later.
Two brothers, Charlie and Michael Wong, are at the helm of the restaurant these days after working themselves up the ranks from washing dishes 25 years ago.
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Their dad first emigrated to Northern Ireland in 1967 when he was 15-years-old, moving to the Portadown area. Here, in 1973, he and his four brothers set up the company and opened a successful restaurant.
The family then moved to Belfast in 1980, settling in Stranmillis where their takeaway and restaurant opened soon after.
When their dad retired in 2016, Michael and Charlie stepped up to manage the restaurant, with their cousins continuing to operate a series of The Welcome takeaways throughout the city.
"When we moved here from Portadown we lived in the building beside the takeaway. We used to have food from there all the time, it was free and family owned so you couldn't complain," Michael said.
"Once I tried the food in the restaurant, the first time I tried was the aromatic duck pancakes, I just fell in love with the place."
The Welcome pride themselves on serving high-quality, fresh food and catering to the masses. Although recognising their food isn't always "traditional" Chinese cuisine, they see this as a positive, as plenty of people continue to flock to the restaurant to enjoy their dishes after all these years.
Michael said: "We pride ourselves on our food being fresh, if you don't like certain items we can work around you, anything can be adjusted. A lot of Chinese chefs are quite aggressive and don't like to change things, but we try to modernise everything as much as we can.
"We had a Head Chef 20 years ago who came from China and he taught Charlie how to cook. Whenever we took over in 2016, we got them back; with them in the kitchen I'm very confident the food will always be good.
"40 years ago when we opened, we only did dim sum and focused on serving the local Chinese community. Two or three years later, my dad decided to change things up to suit local tastes a bit more.
"A lot of people ask why we don't do traditional Chinese, and I say if you do traditional Chinese you're serving skin, fat, and bones - the Irish and European tastes don't like that as much.
"It's not a competition to see how many Chinese people you can get in the restaurant, it's about how many people in the area you can get that like your food. We've been doing this for a long time and I'd say 80-90% of our customers are regulars."
"You have to cater for the masses. That's why we've been able to keep going for so long," Charlie added.
The restaurant has won a number of awards over the years, the most recent being a Golden Chopsticks Award for Best Restaurant in Northern Ireland which came just weeks ago.
Charlie and Michael said anything they do is a team effort between them and their staff members, most of whom have been with them for decades.
"It's all down to making sure we're treating our staff right," Michael explained.
"Every staff member has been with us for one to two decades. The restaurant will do well if we treat them right. Any award we win, we win as a team."
Regular customers travel from across Northern Ireland to get their hands on the food at The Welcome, with particular menu highlights being their satay sauce and szechuan dishes.
Michael said: "During lockdown, people were coming up from Dublin, Banbridge, Newry just for a takeaway, so we felt obliged to stay open for them. They were telling us they'd be driving home then re-heating it when they get home.
"I appreciate when people like our food, when they take the time to come down and try us out. Once they come in, I know we can keep them as customers, that this will be the only Chinese they'll come to. You feel like you're doing something right as they're willing to go out of their way to come down here for food."
The brothers said they love working in Belfast, saying there's "a lot of banter" in the city and between them and their customers. They said the city has a lot of character, and that in a decade or so it could be as multicultural as other parts of the UK.
Michael said: "It's very different from other cities in the UK. Everything slowed down here due to The Troubles, but in around 10 to 15 years I'd say we'll be as multicultural as the rest of the UK.
"Tourists have told us everyone in Belfast is so friendly, and it's because the city still has its roots. You could talk to anyone. If someone fell on the street, a crowd would be around them wanting to help, when it isn't like that in other cities.
"There are a lot more Chinese people in Belfast now as Queen's University has links with a city in China called Shenzhen. 20 years ago, if I saw a Chinese person walking down the street here, I would more or less know them, but it's not like that anymore. The culture has changed a lot."
When asked about how it feels to know the restaurant has now been operating for 40 years, Michael said "time flies when you're having fun." As the years roll on, the brothers are still as dedicated as ever to serving up food that people will travel miles for.
Michael added: "We never claim to be the oldest Chinese restaurant in Belfast, but we're still here, we're still going strong. We don't need to be the oldest, the main thing is we're still here and still serving great food."
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