Why you should experience Jade Garden in Milan, Italy.
Jade Garden is a storied Chinese restaurant where Duomo's historic grandeur meets three generations of one family's extraordinary migration and restaurant journey, carrying Anna Chen's pioneering arrival from the People's Republic of China through Carmen Sun Jonan's 1980 opening and Gigi Chin's decision to abandon engineering for the family dining room.
Set along Via Palazzo Reale near Piazza del Duomo and just steps from Palazzo Reale, the restaurant occupies an exceptional position within Milan's ceremonial center, tucked above street level behind the cathedral square. Original furnishings dating to the 1970s coexist with later additions across several levels, with pale timber, Oriental decorative details and a large upper dining room preserving the formal character of an earlier generation of Chinese restaurants. The interior feels strikingly removed from the rapid turnover of businesses surrounding the Duomo, retaining physical traces of the period in which Chinese dining remained relatively unfamiliar to much of Milan. Large tables suit the family-style service of whole fish, duck, seafood and shared regional dishes. The result is a Duomo restaurant whose long-preserved surroundings reinforce a family history reaching deep into the beginnings of Chinese restaurant culture in Milan.
What you should know about Jade Garden.
Jade Garden is best known for the extraordinary three-generation journey that began with Anna Chen, passed through her daughter Sun Jonan, known as Carmen, and continues under Carmen's son Gigi Chin. Anna grew up amid severe economic hardship in China and returned to school in 1952 after changing laws expanded educational opportunities for women, then became a teacher and entrepreneur whose textile workshop eventually employed more than 200 women. In 1959 she received permission to leave the People's Republic of China to visit her parents in the Netherlands, reached Bologna as her visa neared expiration and in 1960 became the first Chinese woman from the People's Republic to obtain permission to remain in Italy. Anna brought her daughters to Italy in 1973 and opened La Muraglia two years later, an early Milanese restaurant run by immigrants from mainland China that also received Chinese officials visiting the city. Carmen followed her mother into hospitality and opened Giardino di Giada on July 7, 1980, taking over a former Italian restaurant behind the Duomo after arriving in Milan the previous year. The family's next turning point came through Gigi Chin, born and educated in Milan, who earned an engineering degree with a sustainability specialization that included study at Tsinghua University in Beijing and pursued an engineering career in London. When Carmen began contemplating selling the restaurant, Gigi left engineering and returned to carry the family project into its second generation. Culinary continuity passed through another succession: chef Dong directed the food for 25 years before chef Zhao inherited the kitchen, working with Gigi to preserve the Cantonese foundation and introduce contemporary additions. More than four decades after Carmen opened its doors, Jade Garden connects Anna's 1959 departure from China, La Muraglia, Carmen's independent restaurant, Gigi's abandoned engineering career and two generations of chefs within one of Milan's longest surviving Chinese family histories.
Dong Po Rou provides one of the deepest historical threads on the table, braising pork belly into the preparation named for Song-dynasty poet and statesman Su Dongpo and carrying a dish with centuries of Chinese history into the family repertoire. Peking duck moves toward imperial cooking through crisp-skinned poultry served with thin pancakes and accompaniments assembled at the table. Cantonese steamed sea bass takes the opposite approach, using ginger and soy around fresh fish with minimal intervention. Zhao's Sichuan cooking introduces chile and Sichuan pepper into a repertoire whose principal foundation remains Cantonese, widening the relationship between regional traditions. His crispy cockerel with fresh chile intensifies dry heat and spice, and pork belly steamed with preserved vegetables develops richness through a softer, slower technique. For the 2021 Mid-Autumn Festival, Gigi and Zhao created a dedicated sequence that moved through pumpkin-and-meat spring rolls, mixed steamed dumplings, scallops with black beans, Xinjiang cumin beef, Cantonese roast meat fried rice and mooncake. Baozi provide the contemporary counterpoint, bringing filled steamed buns into a restaurant whose culinary line stretches from imperial preparations through Dong's quarter-century tenure to Zhao's current generation.
How to fold Jade Garden into your trip.
Jade Garden works as the meal anchor for an afternoon tracing the seat of Milanese political power from a medieval court through Visconti patronage and Habsburg neoclassicism before reaching the twentieth-century art collection created inside the architecture of Fascist-era Piazza Duomo.
Begin at Palazzo Reale, which developed from the medieval Palazzo del Broletto into the official ducal residence under successive Visconti, Sforza, French and Spanish rulers before Austrian governor Karl Joseph Firmian initiated its decisive eighteenth-century transformation. Luigi Vanvitelli first proposed complete reconstruction, but Vienna rejected the expense and turned to his pupil Giuseppe Piermarini, whose 1770-1778 intervention opened the courtyard toward Piazza Duomo, rebuilt the façade and created the Scalone d'Onore with artists including Martino Knoller, Giocondo Albertolli and Giuseppe Maggiolini. Continue to Chiesa di San Gottardo in Corte, commissioned by Azzone Visconti in 1336 from Francesco Pecorari as the chapel of his new palace and accompanied by the Campanile delle Ore. Giovanni di Balduccio created Azzone's funerary monument after his 1349 death, Giovanni Maria Visconti was assassinated in connection with the church in 1412 and Piermarini's later palace reconstruction absorbed much of the chapel externally, leaving its medieval bell tower as the principal surviving Visconti element. Conclude at Museo del Novecento, housed inside the Palazzo dell'Arengario designed by Enrico Agostino Griffini, Pier Giulio Magistretti, Giovanni Muzio and Piero Portaluppi before a Gruppo Rota conversion created the museum opened in 2010. More than 300 works selected from Milan's civic holdings of over 4,000 pieces chart Italian twentieth-century art, with the building's great spiral ramp connecting the underground level to galleries overlooking the cathedral. The progression moves from Piermarini's transformation of a medieval seat of government through Azzone Visconti and Pecorari's surviving court chapel into Griffini, Magistretti, Muzio and Portaluppi's Arengario recast for Milan's modern art collection, tracing political authority, dynastic patronage and cultural reinvention around the Duomo.
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