Lawrence Fong announced on social media this week that he will close Mandarin, his 7-year-old Winooski restaurant, at the end of October. Fong, 42, told Seven Days that the restaurant’s head chef decided to retire and he could not find a local replacement with the necessary training, nor a suitable candidate willing to relocate to Vermont.
“Chinese food takes a special skill set,” Fong said. “It’s not like pizza and burgers.”
The loss of Mandarin’s chef coincided with another restaurateur approaching Fong about taking over the space. “The stars kind of aligned,” he said. “I was having a hard time finding help, so I made the hard decision to let it go.”
Fong, who also has a real estate business, owns the restaurant building at 22 Main Street but said he was not at liberty to share details of his new tenant. He did say the restaurant will be Asian and he expects it to open in December.
Mandarin’s closure marks the end of almost four decades of Chittenden County Chinese restaurants owned by the Fong family. Fong’s mother, Joyce Fong, presided over Joyce’s Noodle House in Essex for close to 20 years before shuttering it in 2021. Prior to Joyce’s, the family owned another restaurant named Mandarin, which they opened in 1988 on Burlington’s Church Street.
Lawrence Fong told Seven Days in 2020 that he and his sister stood on milk crates at the original Mandarin to help wash dishes — “My first job,” he recalled with a chuckle. Owning the Winooski Mandarin may well be his last job in the restaurant business, Fong said, as he plans to focus on his real estate holdings.
“A lot of people have followed my family and our journey,” he said, noting that people who frequented Joyce’s would sometimes come to Mandarin for its sesame chicken, crab Rangoons, dumplings and beef chow fun. “It is sad that our food won’t be offered anymore in the area.”
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