by John Schaffner for the News Leader
December 13, 2017
Taiwan-born Nathalie Wu, who has been an Amelia Island resident for the past 16 years, will be bringing fast casual Asian street food to Fernandina Beach this month when she opens her Wicked Bao restaurant in the port area of the city in a place likely recalled by locals as the former home of the bar and restaurant known as Wicked Davey’s Saloon.
If Nathalie Wu’s name seems familiar, perhaps you bought one of her painted “My Fortune Rocks.” Wu was a vendor at the Fernandina Beach Market Place farmers market for a year. They are also are available at the Color Green store on Atlantic Avenue at South 11th Street.
Wicked Bao, 232 N. Second St., is named after a complete meal conveniently packed away in a white, warm, soft, steamed bun (bao) that can be filled with pork, chicken, seafood, tofu, etc., and will be a mainstay on the restaurant’s menu which will also offer small plates and noodle and spice bowls for happy hour and dinner. Wu said a decision about opening for lunch will come later.
Wu has plans to open Wicked Bao by mid-month – hopefully Dec. 16 – but has not yet set a firm date. When the restaurant does debut, it will be open from 4 to 6 p.m. for happy hour and 6 to 9 p.m. for dinner.
Although Wu knows neither Fernandina Beach nor Amelia Island has a large Asian population, she said, “I believe the town is now ready for this.”
Wu does not plan to offer a full bar, but the restaurant will have four beers on tap, including Sapporo, and a selection of Asian bottled beers (Chinese, Singapore and Thai), wine, and Vietnamese coffees. The restaurant will have 52 seats inside including 12 at the bar and 28 seats on the outside deck which features a fire pit.
Wu started looking for a location for Wicked Bao in January and signed a five-year lease on the building on June 2. “I have been working on plans for the restaurant ever since then, along with going to school at FSCJ taking courses in business management,” Wu said.
She is well aware that two or three restaurants opened and quickly failed in the location after Wicked Davey’s vacated the building. And some people have voiced concerns that there is a lack of parking at the location. Wu responds that there is a public parking lot one block south at Broome and North Second streets and spaces across the street are only used by port workers during the day.
Wu said that from 2006 to 2017, other restaurants did little inside the space in terms of improvements, while she has totally repainted the interior, changed all of the lighting and furnished the space with all industrial-style furniture.
Wicked Bao will be a fast casual concept with no traditional table service, explained Wu. “Customers will select their food from a large chalkboard as they enter, place their orders and pay at a point-of-sale station near the front door. They will be handed a number to place on the table they select and their food and drink orders will be delivered to their table by staff.”
Wu said the Small Business Development Center helped her develop the plans for her operation.
Although Wu has been a homemaker for the past 20 years with two sons ages 19 and 17, she is no stranger to the food industry. The family moved to Amelia Island in 2001 when her husband, Thomas Tolxdorf, was transferred here to be an executive chef at The Ritz-Carlton, Amelia Island. He died in 2014.
Although owning a restaurant is new to Wu, restaurant management is not. After graduating from college in Taiwan, she worked at a Swiss hotel in management for three years, followed by a restaurant in the Shangri La Hotel in Taipei and The Ritz-Carlton in Singapore, where she was a seafood restaurant manager. That is where she met her husband.
Wu and her family came to Amelia Island from Germany in 2001 on her husband’s work visa. She is now here on a student visa and, with her present schooling and opening the restaurant, plans to change that to an investment visa. Her oldest son, Philip, is a student at Purdue University and younger son Martin is presently applying to colleges.
“Along with bringing delicious authentic Asian street food, the aspirations of Wicked Bao are for creating good friends, and an amazing community in Fernandina Beach,” Wu said.