Manchi Wan - Chinese restaurateur
Manchi Wan
Chinese restaurateur
Manchi Wan was well-known in Jersey in the 1990s and
early 2000s as the owner of popular Chinese restaurants
Manchi Wan (67) shut the doors of Gorey’s Jade Garden, for the final time in 2017.
Shortage of chefs
‘The timing is to do with the fact that my chef has given me notice, as he is moving on, and it is so hard to recruit a really good Chinese chef in the catering trade nowadays. A lot of the good ones are retiring and the mediocre ones are still going, and you can’t bring any fresh blood into the Island due to population regulation,’ said Manchi, whose daughter, Suyin Geddes, is an island dentist.
‘When I first arrived in Jersey there were many more Chinese restaurants, but unfortunately a lot of the long-established, traditional ones are now starting to close, because the restaurateurs are retiring and their children now have established careers, so don’t want to take them on.’
Born in Hong Kong, Manchi first moved to England in 1965, aged 15, to join her father at his restaurant in Gosport, Hampshire. After finishing school she did a degree in sociology and politics at the London School of Economics and spent her summer holidays working in Jersey.
She worked for many years as a co-ordinator at the education department for Hampshire, but in 1992, when the Portsmouth Institute, at which she worked, closed because of budget cuts, she had a change of career and home, buying a Jersey restaurant and moving to the Island to run it.
Bamboo Garden
‘Food was in my blood, as I was brought up in a restaurant from the age of 15,’ she said. She first opened the Bamboo Garden, in Burrard Street, and ran it for four years[1]. Due to its success she then moved to the larger Noble House on Victoria Avenue in 1996, which she ran for ten years.
She retired in 2006, but was persuaded to come out of retirement a couple of years later to run the Beach House at Gorey, before opening Jade Garden, on the site of the former Village Bistro, in 2010.
Although she now calls Jersey her home, Manchi often visits her two sisters in Hong Kong and for a number of years has regularly attended the Beijing Academy of Medical Science in China to study Chinese medicine.
Notes and references
- ↑ Jerripedia editor Mike Bisson recalls:'I was a regular diner at Manchi Wan's Bamboo Garden, because the food was of such a high quality. So many Chinese restaurants in the early '90s just served "takeaway food on a plate", but the Bamboo Garden was a genuine dining experience. I regularly entertained business contacts there, and they were invariably surprised at just how good the food was. I also enjoyed Noble House from the time it opened until I left Jersey in 1999.'
