A TAKEAWAY is closing after 45 years in business.

Stephen’s Chinese in Lower Willingdon will be opening their doors for the final time on Saturday.

The owners, husband and wife Stephen and Oi Lin Shing, first started providing Cantonese food in one of the older Chinese restaurants in Eastbourne town centre around 1970.

Their first owned eatery was the popular Good Friend restaurant on Cavendish Place, opened in 1978 which also became the first Eastbourne Chinese restaurant to feature in the local press as part of their good dining guide and featured regularly thereafter.

With many of the original starting Chinese chefs since retired, Stephen may now be one of the longest serving Chinese chefs in the south east.

Some of the original customers of the Good Friend have followed Stephen and Oi Lin to their Willingdon takeaway and now have three generations in their families all enjoying the food.

The current takeaway first opened in March 1987 and quickly became part of the Willingdon landscape.

In 1996 the takeaway had an unsuccessful planning application to expand into a Chinese restaurant but this inspired Stephen’s other passion of becoming a local councillor.

The takeaway was also pioneering at the time for Eastbourne catering outlets with the kitchen viewable from the customer waiting area.

They were also one of the first businesses to employ and train non-Chinese chefs in Cantonese cuisine during the employment shortage.

One of them, Richard Ford, said: “It was a great and lucky experience to learn their recipes and work in their kitchen which not everyone had the chance to at that time.”

Stephen and Oi Lin said: “The catering trade has given us the opportunity to meet many of you who have become valuable customers and our dear friends who we enjoy seeing.

“We cherish being part of your evenings, weekends and holiday plans such as bank holidays and New Year.”