Milwaukee 3rd Annual Asian Festival

Chicken wing egg rolls a Vue and Lo family tradition

By H. Nelson Goodson
August 22, 2009

Milwaukee – The 3rd Annual Silver City Asian Festival drew hundreds of festival goers on Saturday, August 22, to the near South side event on W. National Ave., between W. 35th and W. 38th Streets. The Asian Fest offered an array of foods, friendly vendors, parade, and plenty of fun during the one-day event.
Milwaukeeans and neighbors enjoyed the great food, music, ethnic performers, and the martial arts presentations of various Asian cultures. Those cultures included Hmong, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipino, Korean, and Laotian.
Performances included Rising Dragon Martial Arts; Chinese lion dancers; Ajanabi, doing a "Dances of Bollywood" demonstration; the Hmong Dance Group; JK Lee Tae Kwon Do; and the Vietnamese Temple Group.
For the last three years, Doua Vue, and Pao Lo along with their daughter Jamie Lo have specialized in providing and cooking egg rolls and chicken egg rolls on the corner of S. 37th and W. National. Their family cooking tradition is to stuff chicken wings with egg roll ingredients and they taste extremely good after getting cooked in open fire grill. They also provide a spicy hot sauce, which makes your taste buds explode with flavor.
The parents of Jamie Lo are originally from Long Chen, Laos, and have lived in the U.S.A. for 30 years. Their family cooking tradition has added Laotian flavor to the annual Silver City Asian Festival.
Previously, the Asian Moon Festival used to take place at the Henry Maier Festival Park at the Lakefront Summerfest grounds. The Asian Moon Festival canceled its event in 2006 when it couldn’t get volunteers to operate the festival at Summerfest. The Wisconsin Organization for Asian Americans-Milwaukee, which stages the pan-Asian celebration (Asian Moon Festival), decided to cancel its festival for a lack of volunteers and a funding shortfall.
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