Joy to the Garden!

For some reason I've spent the last hour obsessed about Joy Garden, the first Chinese restaurant I ever went to as a kid, where I'd drive my parents crazy by ordering a hamburger.  Finally after following Brothatime!!'s example I took my first bite of egg foo young, and a life-long love affair was begun. It might be the last of a dying breed, the Chinese restaurant that you dress up to go too and they serve huge vats of crazy Hawaiian drinks for like $1.25, you can feed a family of 9 for something like 3 bucks, and they serve hot tea for no apparent reason. - XMASTIME 2010

For some reason someone just posted all about it on Facebook so I'll let them do the talking. I miss you Joy Garden!!!

Joy Garden Restaurant, 2918 W. Broad Street, Richmond, Virginia

Tommy Chin opened Joy Garden at 2918 W. Broad Street in 1957. Chin hosted Chinese New Year’s parties attended by Virginia and Richmond politicians at the restaurant. The restaurant closed on July 31, 2016.

Tommy Chin came, as so many immigrants did, through Ellis Island, seeking the American dream he had heard about in China.

As a boy growing up outside Canton, China, more recently called Guangzhou, he longed to come to New York, where his father and brother already had moved. He was able to secure passage in 1936, still a teen.

He settled with his father and brother in Chinatown in lower Manhattan, working for a laundry. His first job was packing shirts at the end of the business day and delivering them to customers up and down Manhattan and into other boroughs — all by bicycle.

Later he would get his first restaurant job in New York. After serving in the Navy's Atlantic Fleet during World War II, he moved to Washington and continued his budding restaurant career. He was 40 when he moved to Richmond and opened his own place.

He found it in Richmond, where he used his revered skills as a chef and businessman to operate a restaurant for a quarter-century and to clear a path for his children to get the education they needed to pursue their own professional dreams.

The Joy Garden, on Broad Street just west of Boulevard, was one of just a handful of restaurants offering Chinese fare in Richmond in 1957. Mr. Chin brought traditional Canton cuisine to Richmond, blended it with other dishes he had mastered earlier in his restaurant career, and added his own creations.

In 1982, Mark Sin and three other partners bought the business from Chin. They added more Hunan and Sichuan dishes to Joy Garden’s largely Cantonese menu, and more than doubled the restaurant’s staff. A few years later Sin bought out his partners and he and his wife have run Joy Garden since. The pair had a West End location at 9109 Quioccasin Road from 1993 to 2005. Sin said he had to close because he couldn’t afford to pay rent that continued to rise with the popularity of Scott’s Addition and the decline in customers.

The property was purchased in 2015 by a group made up of Birck Turnbull of Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer and Charles Bice of KB Building Service. After the purchase in 2015,  the Sins say they were told that Joy Garden’s rent would more than double after 2016.

Perch restaurant now occupies the building.  Perch blends Pacific-inspired flavors with the Virginia Spirit. Housed in the former Joy Garden space in historic Scott’s Addition, our award-winning and thoughtful renovations brings a sleek, modern feel to our neighborhood, while still incorporating the Richmond charm that locals and visitors come to love. Source: Michael Thompson, richmondbizsense.com, Jackie Kruszewski, styleweekly.com, Randy Hallman, Richmond Times-Dispatch, perchrva.com

Another great thing about Joy Garden: nobody was EVER there.