After her divorce in 1966, Joyce Chen sold the original restaurant to her ex-husband, who converted it in 1972 to a Japanese eatery called Osaka. As a single mother both encumbered and assisted by her three children, she managed to open a second restaurant in 1967, called The Joyce Chen Small Eating Place. It was located between Harvard University and MIT in Central Square, Cambridge, at 302 Massachusetts Avenue. Joyce Chen's son, Stephen Chen, later noted that the opening of this restaurant changed the landscape of the Central Square area in Cambridge. Originally, it was a retail and industrial area, dominated by a NECCO (New England Confectionery Company) factory. People lined up to get Chen's Chinese food at this small restaurant, which seated 60 people. According to Stephen Chen, at this restaurant his mother introduced the Northern style of dim sum, and the now popular "soup dumplings" "(shao long bao)". The restaurant was very popular with computer hackers. It operated for 21 years and closed in 1988.