They peek around, look at the menus, and leave with bags of takeout.Ī Facebook group created by community members to help Chinatown-ID businesses and others owned by people of color, called “Support the ID – Community United,” brought in around a 30 percent bump in business that Eric is grateful for. As the orders are packed, customers trickle through the doors of the restaurant. To-go orders from customers provide some additional support. The orders are placed the night before, and the family team starts on them in the morning. Around 80 percent of these are from a Chinese grocery store app, Weee!, which buys about 300 to-go orders from Jade Garden per day and delivers them to Chinese grocery stories in the Seattle area. Now, “we live off deliveries and to-go’s,” according to Eric. Eric attributes this to the stigma that Asian businesses are facing after the spread of coronavirus. The restaurant was already suffering in the weeks before Inslee’s order closing dine-in at restaurants. In the first two weeks of March, Jade Garden lost 80 percent of its business. “Some people take it to the extra point.” “They see there’s no point in working anymore, they think it’s like WWIII,” Eric said. His wife Fiona, and friends from college, are also in a frenzy of movement, volunteering their help.Īlmost all the staff were let go recently, as they couldn’t afford to pay them - some 40 waiters, cooks, dim sum cart ladies - and some who they didn’t want to lose are too afraid to come, and risk exposure to coronavirus, Eric said. Eric’s younger siblings, Ivy and Evan, are in constant motion, occasionally taking phone orders from customers. Each day, Leo wakes up before dawn to start cooking to-go orders.Įric snags bites of noodles from a fork when he has a spare second, between helping customers, fulfilling orders, and making sure things are running smoothly. His father Leo Chan has run the restaurant for 17 years. “It’s all hands on deck right now,” said Eric Chan, Mei’s son. They are packed into plastic clamshell containers by a bustling team, mostly members of Chan’s family.

Mei Chan, Jade Garden’s owner, stacks a metal cart high with round bamboo steamers filled with dim sum items from the kitchen. Extra hot sauce sits at hand on the counter, and a table is piled with disposable takeout containers. Jade Garden’s brightly-lit dining area has now been transformed into a station for packing to-go orders. Inslee intended to slow the spread of novel coronavirus. Adds Ming, “The result is a meltingly tender duck that also carves beautifully.The daily specials at Jade Garden are still written out on a white board in Chinese and English, but no customers are allowed to dine-in there - or at any restaurant in the state, following an order from Gov. But the undisputed star of the menu is Wing Lei’s acclaimed Peking Duck, which Ming calls “perhaps the most famous dish of Beijing, prepared since the Imperial era.” From a sustainable approach to sourcing to its painstaking preparation and the fanfare of presenting the duck tableside, the dish beautifully blends tradition and celebration.

Ming indeed recommends family-style sharing while dining at Wing Lei, so everyone at the table can savor popular dishes like Alaskan King Crab Salad, Garden Dim Sum and Garlic Beef Tenderloin. “Food was a passion for my family, especially during Chinese New Year, when my family would gather and prepare a big, celebratory feast,” he notes. Wing Lei’s exceptional Chinese cuisine also comes naturally to Ming, who grew up in Taishan, a city in China’s Guangdong province. “It seems like destiny that I’m overseeing Wing Lei’s kitchen,” he says. For executive chef Ming Yu, cooking nightly at the Michelin-starred Wing Lei feels like a full-circle moment: He was introduced to the Las Vegas culinary scene as head chef at Ho Wan, a restaurant at the Desert Inn, where Wynn and Encore now stand.

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