【Movers & Shakers 】Frank Lin of Nicholson's and Char Char Bistro

Frank Lin's Unique Passion Project, Char Char Bistro

Char Char Bistro is one of those places that, if you know, you know.

Based on the back of a wildly popular Classic Burger that people travel from all over China to try out, owner Frank Lin has created a community of steak and seafood lovers who gather for secret, off-menu, season-specific feasts, months-long dry aging experiments with common and arcane meats, and heart-stopping forays into food experimentation that takes equal inspiration from American fast food, Chinese regional favorites, pan-Asian flavors, and classic European home-spun cuisine.

To wit: "China's most expensive burger" at 258 yuan (US$35.66), a mammoth stack of 12-hour smoked Angus ribs on a signature brioche bun.

From their origins as a butchery in the mid-2010s to their current manifestation as a fusion bistro today, it has been a winding road for Frank Lin and Char Char Bistro. We caught up with Frank to talk about changing times and tastes and keeping the passion for trying new things.

Credit: Brandon McGhee

Maybe, to start, you could introduce yourself and tell us where you're from?

Frank: My name is Frank. Chinese name is Lin Yongfeng. I was born in Taiwan, and I was raised in Los Angeles. So, I moved to Shanghai in 2010. I've been in Shanghai for 14 years.

Credit: Brandon McGhee

What brought you to Shanghai?

Frank: This is, you know, my second home. Me and my wife live here. My job, we do beef distribution, and then we run restaurants. We started as a butchery; our first restaurant was in 2016 in K11 Mall, called Nicholson's Grill.

We opened a restaurant because the import business was going well and the butchery was going well. The sequence is actually butchery first, and then restaurant, and then wholesale, and now we work with restaurants all over town.

But our first thing, cooking, was like the movie Godfather. We just had a single table in the back, serving secret dinners. If you knew, you knew.

So, how did the market look in 2016 when you first opened Nicholson's?

Frank: Flourishing! Like right when we opened. It really took off. I still remember this, actually. We didn't do any advertising. We didn't do anything, and it took off right away.

The day we opened, for the first month, we did 360, almost 370,000 RMB. Wow. Without doing anything.

At that time, steak was the popular trend. Coming from how it's done in Japan. Like, small venues, everyone's standing and enjoying steak and drinking beer at reasonable prices, yakitori style.

It was new in China. And you couldn't get a real quality steak for 120 RMB or so. So we became known for having really good-quality steak at a good price. Our place was very small – 38 square meters – and our best number for a month was a little over a million in sales. Eventually though, we added a few other items to the menu, including the Classic Burger which is something that sort of chanted my fate in a few ways.

Wow. That's crazy now that I think about it.

Frank: So you can imagine how many steaks and burgers we were moving.

Credit: Brandon McGhee

What were the kinds of steaks you were importing? Where was it coming from?

Frank: We used a lot of, at that time, Australian Angus. Grain fed.

Okay. When did American beef come on the scene? That's recently, correct?

Frank: About four years ago, four or five years ago.

What's been the impact of that?

Frank: Not really such a big impact. Everybody has their preference, and it depends on where the customers are coming from. If you live in Australia, of course, you prefer Australian, right?

So, for the Chinese market, it's always by preference. The impression that Chinese customers have is that American imported meats are more flavorful. If the customer wants a more flavorful steak, they'll choose the American one. Because of my background, I sell mostly American.

Of course, Australian ones are also, you know, a big part of my business. Right now, when selling to restaurants, it's almost half American and half Australian.

Credit: Brandon McGhee

It seems you have your community, though. I've heard you got some funding directly from customers who didn't want you to close a few years ago.

Frank: Yeah, we had our regulars. And then we needed to close, you know... landlord issues. The guys down at More than Eat wanted nothing less than highway robbery for a 38 sqm venue. Forget it. When we closed, I had so many people come to me and say "man, no way. You can't close. You're space is always rocking" or something to that effect. Sooooo many that came forward and said they didn't want me to close. This was when we closed the Nicholson's on Julu Road venue.

They said, "Listen. This is your passion. You should just keep on going. And you're burgers are just freaking amazing, especially at your pricing." I had this one customer, another America, who would text me frequently to complain about like "I mean come on, what... we're supposed to go to these other burger places with "fancy ketchup" for a smaller 98 RMB burger that's dry super dry AF, No man, this needs a soLUTION (his emphasis)."

I was going to maybe take a break or whatever.

And, yeah. They said, like, "How much do you need? Come on Frank, how much DO. YOU. NEED?". I thought about it for awhile, and thought "well, maybe I could do more than my last hole in the wall place?" I pitched it to some customers, and THEY RAISED THE MONEY to help me open back up. It was totally their initiative, I couldn't believe that sort of love and, I guess, belief in me and the food I create. So we said "what the heck, let's do it", and so we opened Char Char Bistro. It was steaks, the infamous classic burgers and we added more.

What was your concept for Char Char Bistro, then? There's lots of French elements coming from the "bistro" side of it.

Frank: Yes. So, at that time, a few years ago, Shanghai was very taken with this bistro idea. So, we wanted to add this element, this idea, to what we have. So, burgers, steaks, and bistros were our targets.

For us, it's actually very fusion. Fusion, as in, like, we have French dishes, we have Italian dishes, and then I'm actually adding some Thai-style dishes very soon. So, it's really personal cuisine selections of mine and experimenting.

Credit: Brandon McGhee

What's the secret to a good burger? What's the philosophy behind the perfect burger?

Frank: Wow, the philosophy for a good burger! Wow, that's a deep question. Okay, I'll try. First things first, you definitely, definitely need good meat. The burger was crafted to be a kind of... homage to a place called In N'Out in California. I'm a cali-guy. so those burgers live in me. But on the flip side of that, I am also a sucker for world cuisine, and have always had a fascination with French food. Its level of care in natural ingredients, refinement, attention to detail, down to the texture of their bread products.

The texture of the grind, the flavor of the meat, the fat-to-meat ratio – that's the key to having a good patty. The way we grind our burgers is a little different to most places that grind in house. We have these industrial size machines, so the capacity and power of the machine makes a better grind than a smaller grinder, it makes a very big difference.

Also our special blend for the patty that we have, I'm not gonna go into the specifics because it's kind of a trade secret, but our blend lends itself to something super juicy with a flavor that is distinctly, naturally, beefy. You bite into the burger, and you say "wow, this tastes like... legit good beef." It comes from a selected few cuts of beef that are perfectly together.

We also use genuine American cheddar cheese. The good stuff, not that processed junk. We melt it directly on the beef, covered in a wok.

Bread for me, is very important because the bread-to-meat-to-sauce ratio is everything. Can't stand those places, where you bite into a burger, and it's basically a mouth full of bread... or a mouth full of meat.

So. Yea. I like French bread, French-style bread. So I use a brioche. I like them soft, flavorful, and buttery, you know, so I use a French-style brioche. And I've been using the same recipe for the last seven years. It's like the signature recipe, and it will be one of the first things people will notice about the burger. It's soft, buttery, not too over powering, like some of these burger places just down you out with bread on a burger.

Of course, there's our signature sauce that hits those In'N Out notes, and we put on crispy lettuce and caramelized grilled onions. Some people say "why no pickles"... after the first bite, they're like "okay, yea, this is superb and doesn't need anything else".

Yeah, it's like, well, if it's not broken...

Credit: Brandon McGhee

So you have like a very large audience just coming for the burger, I guess?

Frank: Yes, the people who don't know me always come for the burgers and the steak. The people that actually know me personally will actually come to the restaurant and ask for a lot of off-menu items. You know, because we have a small community. Eventually, these wanghong started coming to my shop, one after another, and were blown away by the burgers. They'd post about it, and then a few days later, an explosion of people would come through the door, to the point, we'd have to turn people away on a basis that was more frequent than I would have liked.

It also lead to several evenings, where we completely sold out of burgers.

And this is because I'm a foodie myself. But because I own a restaurant, I don't have a lot of time to go out to dine, you know. So for me, I'm always in the kitchen creating things. The infamous classic burger for example, was something that was created over MONTHS of iterating, until I got it, just the way I wanted it.

Credit: Brandon McGhee

Credit: Brandon McGhee

What are your signature and most popular menu items these days?

Frank: I have a lot of off-menu items that aren't on the menu. But, but the main, MAIN, main signature is definitely the Classic Burger. That's what keeps other people coming back, it's made some of my customers bonkers (like when we closed Nicholson's). The classic burger that's offered here, has been offered since day one, when we opened the restaurant at Char Char.

Actually, it's funny, for the May holiday, all our reservations are from people not from Shanghai. People visiting from out of town, like, people from Wulumuqi, people from Jinan, people from Wuhan, when they come, it's only for burgers. They know about the burgers, and they want to try the burgers. The burgers and the steaks. So, yeah.

Looking back on opening in 2016 and operating several venues in 2024, what's changed about the F&B business in Shanghai?

Frank: The fundamentals of the restaurant business have changed. The reason why I said that is, you know, honestly, 15 years ago, when a restaurant was doing its job, like, you know, creating good food and keeping to their standards, you could have customers. Good food and proper standards were enough.

But now, since China is so advanced in social media, if you don't do any sort of marketing or if you don't put yourself out there, you just get lost or something. You have to put yourself out there on social media to reach your audience. You know, really use the power of social media and advertising.

One of my longtime customers says, "I saw this video, like, three days ago on Instagram. Where's your version?"

What are your favorite things about living and working in Shanghai?

Frank: Oh, I love the city. The diversity, I mean, like really, this is – I don't know if I can say that this is like LA, but it's definitely a large metropolis city. So the diversity is here. So for me, I love different varieties of food.

I mean the quality now compared to 10 years ago when I first arrived. It's just gotten better. Now it's world-class. Like, honestly, you get world-class ingredients, even though they're very expensive.

But hey, you know, you get what you pay for, right? If you want it, it's there.

Also, I think I like how the city is structured. Because, I mean, I hop on the metro. I can practically go anywhere in China. Everything's very quick and easy to access. Like when you go to LA, you have to drive. I haven't driven for the last five years here.

And I recently started riding bicycles to work. And in LA, you cannot do that. I like how compact the city is.

And I really like the food. I can get Chinese. I mean, not just Chinese; you can get Sichuan; you can get Hunan, right? Because I eat spicy. And then, like big Dongbei dishes.

Credit: Brandon McGhee

Last question: As a foodie, where do you recommend eating around town?

Frank: I can go on for hours. Like, okay, how many do you need? Now you have to give me your own preferences. Cellar to Table is actually one of my favorites. I like the ambiance a lot. And the food is great.

How about two more Chinese restaurants? One cheap and one expensive.

Frank: Okay, I love noodles. So Lanzhou noodles are always one of my things. There's actually one in Minghang, called Jinqiang. They recently opened, like three months ago. And I've gone like three times, four times. Yeah.

I don't really do fancy. That's not really my... Oh, except, you know, taking my wife for birthdays.

Other than that, I usually don't do fancy. I like Taizhou Cai. And there's a restaurant called Yuan Da. Like further out, Qibao Hongqiao area. For like 300-400 RMB, you can have a very good set of Taizhou Cai.

Oh! dessert. What's this now?

In addition to the burgers, people come for the baked-to-order chocolate chip cookies. I mean, chocolate chip cookies, that's not exactly original... BUT... getting them right from the oven, you can't find this anywhere else in Shanghai. It comes from my time in California, in junior school. It was my favorite breakfast, two chocolate chip cookies and a carton of milk. The school usually had the cookies fresh out of the oven two days a week at 7:20 in the morning, so I was showing up at 7:25 so I could get them while the chocolate was still melty and the cookie soft and still slightly doughy. I loved, I still love it.

I've had so many North Americans tell me that this reminds them of Christmas, when their mothers would bake chocolate chip cookies for Santa the night before Christmas, and everyone loved eating them right out of the oven. The chocolate chip cookie with a glass of milk, are nostalgia for me, a taste of comfort, a reminder of my younger carefree days, when starting your day meant having something so simple, and warm like a freshly baked cookie.

Credit: Brandon McGhee

What's next for Char Char Bistro? Expanding? Menu changes?

Frank: Right now, we have two locations. So no, right now, honestly, there are no further expansion plans at the moment. I want to keep it small for now.

Yeah, we're updating the menu very regularly. So every three to four months, I add a few dishes. For example, yesterday I just tested...like a mini squid. Yeah, with like a Spanish touch of tartar sauce. But I'm not really completely happy with it. It's still a work in progress.

So I'm trying to do this little different stuff all the time. I have a passion for food. I do have a passion for food.

And... Look at my stomach, you know. Never trust a skinny chef.