Au Bonheur du Palais was opened in 1985 by the parents of the present proprietors. Elder brother Andy is chef and Tommy is front of restaurant.
After leaving Guangdong in the 1940s, the Shans lived in Hong Kong, Japan, Sydney, Kuala Lumpur and Vanuatu (where they opened a restaurant in the capital Port Vila). SHAN Cheng – Andy and Tommy’s father – was a trained chef while Madame Shan was a natural and picked up her culinary skills along the way. She was originally from Shunde, Guangdong.
In the early 1990s, Andy and Tommy became besotted with Sichuan cuisine. The back story to that is that in 1987, Montpellier and Chengdu became twin cities. Tommy had attended the University of Montpellier.
One time years later, an old friend from Montpellier called to say Sichuan Master Chef SHU Guozhong was going to be at his home.
Andy and Tommy left Bordeaux at six in the morning and arrived in Montpellier at 11 am. From that time until one the next morning, Shu whipped up one Sichuan speciality after another. No one was hungry that fateful day. For a long time after that, every year or two, Andy and Tommy Shan would visit Shu in Chengdu to learn more from the maestro. On those trips, they also sourced spices including the famed Sichuan peppercorn, traditionally more quintessential to Sichuan cuisine than chilli which was only introduced into the Middle Kingdom about 300 years ago.
74 rue Paul Louis Lande
