Inside ‘Top Chef’ Mei Lin’s Swanky Beverly Hills Chinese Restaurant, 88 Club

One of Los Angeles’s most talented chefs, Mei Lin, will open her third restaurant, called 88 Club, in the heart of Beverly Hills on April 4. The restaurant will feature a polished menu of Chinese dishes like nam yu (red fermented bean curd) roasted chicken, prawn and bamboo shoot wontons, and sweet and sour squirrel fish. The opening represents Lin’s return to finer dining fare after the 2020 closure of Nightshade, her award-winning Arts District restaurant.

In 2020, Mei Lin had just closed Nightshade, one of the city’s most celebrated modern Asian restaurants, which served its last takeout meal during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nightshade earned accolades and recognition from multiple publications, including the 2019 Eater Award for Restaurant of the Year, Eater Best New Restaurant, and was finalist for James Beard Foundation Best New Restaurant (an awards ceremony was not held that year due to the pandemic and fallout around the Beards committee’s selection processes). Since then, the Top Chef Season 12 winner has been on a tear on the Food Network, winning the fourth season of Tournament of Champions. Born in China but raised in Dearborn, Michigan to a family of Chinese restaurant owners, Lin developed much of her career in Los Angeles, working at Spago and Ink before taking a role as a private chef for Oprah Winfrey. In 2022, she opened Daybird with former Nightshade partner Francis Miranda, a casual fried chicken and fish sandwich restaurant in the Silver Lake area, where it remains open and popular today.

At 88 Club, which takes over the former Velverie, Lin is partnering with Miranda (also of Lock & Key, Trophies Burger Club, and Nightshade), who has always wanted to open a Chinese restaurant. Expect the menu to be “very straightforward,” according to Lin. “It’s no thrills; what you see is what you get.” The approach contrasts with that of Nightshade, a more modern interpretation of Asian flavors with Lin’s California cuisine background. “My first restaurant was dare I say fusion-y. It was more of me showcasing my culinary journey and experience traveling with the foods that I enjoy eating,” she says. 88 Club’s menu reflects the breadth of Chinese cuisine based on Lin’s experience in Dearborn, across China, and in other diaspora communities. “I’m just going back to my roots of growing up in a Chinese restaurant.”

Flavors and dishes at the restaurant aren’t regionally specific but instead based on Lin’s experiences in Hong Kong, Vancouver, and other travels. “It’s not straight-up Cantonese, we’re going to have a little Sichuan, some Taiwanese,” Lin says. “We’re kind of touching everything.” Sesame prawn toast will be a 2.0 of the lauded version at Nightshade, placed between two slices of bread and served with hot mustard and sweet and sour sauce. “The idea is you play with two different flavors, so it’s an adventure,” says Lin, who suggests that diners combine the sauces for the best flavor impact. The chef also does a version of her father’s nam yu chicken wings, typically tinted red in American Chinese kitchens with food coloring but a dark crimson with red yeast fermented bean curd. Lin marinates the whole chicken and serves a roasted half portion with aromatic soy sauce and scallion relish.

The menu extends to sweet and sour squirrel fish, deep-fried and presented tableside in a sauce flavored with pineapple, ginger, garlic, scallion, and lemongrass. Westholme Australian wagyu comes in a searing hot cow-shaped skillet as if it were fajitas. There are plenty of vegetarian dishes, like a Singaporean chow mein, meant to appeal to a range of LA palates.

Though Lin didn’t cook a ton of traditional Chinese food as a professional, learning how she wanted to shape these dishes has been its own journey. Lin went to China in 2024, eating her way through Hong Kong, and later ventured to Vancouver in Canada, which has a sizable Chinese population, to understand more of what she envisioned here. “I’ve grown up with the flavors and applied a bunch of different techniques,” she says. “Chinese food is very simple but very complex at the same time, and that’s what I’m playing with.”

As for the space, Lin says Miranda was completely in charge of that department. “I think it’s very moody; it’s definitely a vibe. My favorite room is probably the bar,” says Lin. The Santa Monica Boulevard restaurant offers just 44 seats and five spots at the bar, plus a curtained private dining area that peers into the main dining room. Designed by Alexis Readinger of Preen, the elegant, Art Deco-like interior features regal green hues, black and white checkered tiling, and vintage sconces. Tables are adorned with silver-bound plates, black painted surfaces, and brass accents. The bar recalls chic Hong Kong hotels with its garnet-tinted stone surfaces and sweeping lines.

With the industry’s current economic instability, Lin does feel trepidation about opening a higher-end restaurant in Beverly Hills right now. “I’m happy with the menu, but the restaurant business is hard. Margins aren’t great, but we’re going to do our best, put out the best service, and hopefully that’s enough,” she says. Lin is grateful for the audiences she’s reached with her Food Network work and hopes it translates to guests coming in. “Me being on TV is only going to bring more butts in seats, for lack of a better term, so I hope it helps out the business.”

Angelenos familiar with Lin’s food at Nightshade can only be excited for her next effort, in spite of the circumstances — five years after the onset of COVID-19, post-2025 wildfires, and economic headwinds. Given her talent and fame, plus a solid team of chef de cuisine Nick Russo, restaurateur Miranda, former Gwen assistant general manager Diana Lee as the GM, and bartender Kevin Nguyen consulting on cocktails, the recipe looks good.

88 Club opens tonight, April 4, at 9737 S. Santa Monica Boulevard, Beverly Hills, 90210. It’s open Tuesday to Thursday, 5:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., and until 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Closed Sundays and Mondays. Reservations are available on Resy.