Deborah "Debbie" Leong still remembers the first time she met longtime customer Rusti Gephart over a takeout order of chopped steak, lu'au na'au and pipikaula.

"You were a little girl," Leong told Gephart, now 27. As Leong tells it, Gephart's mother, Radford High School teacher Joan Loo, was cradling her as the family sat down to eat at Leong's Hawaiian Food & Cafe in Kalihi.

"I've been coming here since before I could walk," Gephart said. "Whenever I came home from college (University of Washington), this was the first place I came. My granny used to send me care packages of food from Leong's. And now, even my 2-year-old daughter has eaten here."

After 55 years full of fond memories — and a dedicated group of regular customers — Leong's is closing Friday.

The family-run restaurant, founded in 1950 by the late Lucy D. "Honey" Leong, moved in 1966 from Mokauea Street to its current location at 2343 N. King St. next to Owen Street.

"I'm going to miss the chopped steak, salted watercress and lomi aku," said Miles Koga, a Leong's patron since 1978. "When you come here, you just pray for parking. But the food is worth it. She better open somewhere else."

Leong's specializes in kalua pig, lu'au and beef stew, chopped steak, chicken long rice and lu'au na'au but also serves aku bone, five kinds of raw lomi, and salt meat and watercress.

Debbie Leong, 53, who has been running the business since the death of her mother-in-law, said the closing is due to a lack of parking for customers and an increase in rent.

"We can't pay rent if customers can't find parking," she said. "Parking has always been a problem but it has gotten worse the past few years and it's hurt our business, which is down over 50 percent."

John Leong, Honey's son and Debbie's husband, works full time as a diver at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard but helps his wife at the diner when needed.

"His job is our livelihood" Debbie Leong said.

She will vacation in Northern California next month and decide what to do when she gets back. She has not ruled out reopening Leong's at another location.

"It's devastating," Gephart said of the closing.

Gephart said her father and friends have been planning to come as often as possible before the closing to try to figure out the ingredients to Leong's specialty dishes in case the business doesn't reopen.

The former Debbie Lau began working at Leong's when she was 18.

"The funniest thing," she said, "is that even when I worked with my mother-in-law, we'd see people walk by us on the street that we'd recognize. We didn't know their names but we knew them by what they ate. So we'd say, 'That's na'au or that's pipikaula.' There were a lot of beef stews and rice."

Reach Rod Ohira at rohira@honoluluadvertiser.com.