Jarrett Wrisley, co-owner of Shan in Bozeman, has been twice recognized by the James Beard Foundation. In 2024, he received a nod for Best New Restaurant as a semifinalist, advancing to the finalist list. Then this year, he made the semifinalist list for Best Chef: Mountain.
Shan, which means “mountain” in Chinese, offers dishes inspired by Thai and Chinese cooking styles, prepared with fresh Montana ingredients. The restaurant, owned by Chef Wrisley and his wife, Candice Lin, seats up to 80 guests. Set in the Cannery district, its izakaya-style dining room features an open kitchen, lofty ceilings, smooth wooden tables, and woven bamboo pendant lights that evoke a sense of being transported to the other side of the world.
His passion for Asian culture began early, inspired by childhood memories of Asia in National Geographic magazines his mother subscribed to. Fascinated by the Himalayas and driven by a love of mountains, he developed a lasting desire to explore beyond his hometown.
Jarrett grew up in Emmaus, a small town outside of Allentown, Pennsylvania. “That town felt very small to me, even as a child,” he admits. “As I got a little bit older, all I wanted to do was leave.” This ambition took him to Colgate University in New York, where he studied Asian studies and Chinese. His direction became even clearer after spending a semester abroad in Beijing, China.
“And then I was hooked. I learned how to speak Mandarin in Beijing, and then I took a train out west to Xinjiang, and I traveled through Gansu Province, and I went down to Sichuan, and then I went down to Hunan, and crossed the border over to Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand.” Wrisley returned to the United States to finish his college education.
He worked in New York, on Wall Street, but soon realized finance was not for him. Motivated by his interest in writing, he moved to Asia to cover food, travel, and culture, which led to key opportunities in Beijing.
Wrisley’s love of Asian cuisine began with his Aunt Judy, who lived in New York. “So whenever we would visit her, I would always eat Chinese food. So one of the first food memories was at a little Chinese restaurant. I think it was on the Upper West Side called Pig Heaven, and they brought out a suckling pig.”
“I was just amazed. The face was still on the animal, and it was crispy and delicious, and it didn’t scare me at all. In fact, I was really interested.”
He started helping his mother in the kitchen as a young boy and was cooking dinner for his family as an adolescent. Mostly, “I read ferociously, and I liked to write,” he admits to never considering being a chef.
He began his writing career focusing on Chinese cuisine in Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan Province. After six months, he relocated to Shanghai and served as a food critic and magazine editor at That’s Shanghai for four years.
As a young journalist, he had one of his most memorable experiences assisting Anthony Bourdain and Zero Point Zero Productions in exploring Chengdu's cuisine. He spent a week eating and drinking with Bourdain, a celebrated chef, author, and TV host, later writing about the experience, which he considered an incredible opportunity to meet and share his knowledge of Chinese cuisine with one of his heroes.
During his time at That’s Shanghai, he had the chance to eat at hundreds of regional Chinese restaurants throughout the country, particularly in Shanghai, but also while traveling elsewhere. This exposure gave him a broad foundation and a deeper understanding of food. He was able to dine not only at Chinese eateries but also at prominent places like Jean George, as well as restaurants specializing in Middle Eastern and Japanese cuisine.
“So if I did go somewhere and have a bad meal, I would write about it. I wouldn’t write about it in a nasty way, but I would try to accurately represent my experience as a diner, and I would go to places several times, but I realized very quickly that this was not what I wanted to do with my life.”
“I started working with the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong and then branched out to US magazines and newspapers. What I was most interested in was writing about how cuisines and politics and culture and shortages and all these things came together.”
He left China in 2008. “It wasn’t a great time to be in China as a foreigner writing on a freelance basis. A lot of people who were there were leaving either because the government wouldn’t renew your visa or because they didn’t feel like it was a sustainable decision to stay there.”
He spent years writing about regional Thai cuisine for The Atlantic, traveling across Thailand to cook with locals and learn their recipes. His main goal was to research dishes for his first restaurant, a fact known by his editor, Corby Cummer.
“Then after about a year, I started to take everything that I learned and format it into some sort of a restaurant menu, and then I found a little shop.” With his father's help, he renovated the space and opened Soul Food Mahanakorn in 2010.
Soul Food Mahanakorn focused on Thai soul food, including fried chicken, grilled pork ribs, and other grilled meats. “It was a very casual, ingredient-driven place with a nice cocktail menu and some natural wines and craft beers.” The restaurant became very successful with the addition of another restaurant up the street and in Hong Kong.
Wrisley met his wife, Candice Lin, at a bar in Shanghai in 2006. “She had family in Taiwan, family in mainland China, and she was raised in New York and Florida. She traveled back to Shanghai to meet her aunts, and uncles, and cousins that she had never met before. She was just out of college, and we met there, and we fell in love and moved into an apartment in the French Concession together, and then eventually moved to Thailand together.”
As for his wanting to open a restaurant, “I pulled Candice in against her will, but quickly she realized that this was also a creative outlet for her. My wife is an artist. She’s a great calligrapher, and so she was heavily involved in the design work and the menus and the images that we used for the restaurant.” She also managed the books.
In 2020, the COVID pandemic descended on the world. “I had two restaurants in the building where the first case of COVID was discovered outside of China,” Wrisley shares of the building being shut down immediately. “You would’ve thought that a nuclear reactor went off. There were people in hazmat suits, and it was cordoned off and closed.”
“I closed my first restaurant, which was always very, very successful. After I ran out of money, I just couldn’t pay my people anymore, and then, I closed my second one, and the third one. Then the one in Hong Kong closed, and I just realized that I needed to leave.”
Wrisley, Candice, and their son August landed on the East Coast to reconnect with family in 2022. They drove west, exploring towns such as Ketchum, Salt Lake City, Durango, and Telluride. “I’m a skier, and I love the outdoors, and I decided that after being deprived of that for 20-odd years, I needed to be somewhere where I had really good access to nature.”
During their exploration, they stopped in Bozeman to gas up the car before quickly moving further west. As winter neared, “my wife was getting very tired of sleeping in motels, in a tent.” They had not found a suitable place to call home and decided to drive to Bozeman, where he met Ryan Wilson from Rockford Coffee and Travis Collins from SHINE Beer Sanctuary for coffee. The two expressed such welcome to Wrisley and his talents that he and his wife decided to stay. “I just needed one person to say, ‘please come,’ and two people did.”
The idea for his restaurant, Shan, began. “I rented this house down a little lane called Hillside Land, and there’s a mountain in the back, and 'shan' is the Chinese character for mountain or mountain range. I was also playing with the idea of really trying to articulate this idea of mountain cuisine from Northern Thailand, landlocked places in Asia, southwestern China, western China.”
At first, he opened supper clubs at his home. After hosting seven dinners, the Gallatin Health Department sent him a cease-and-desist letter. This letter forced him to pursue another path. After taking on some private chef jobs, he decided to look for a spot for a restaurant.
He found a space in the Cannery District, in the spot where Lot G Cafe, a daytime eatery that served decadent comfort food with healthy options made from local ingredients, once stood.
With Candice’s creativity, the high-ceilinged space took on an izakaya feel, with smooth wood tabletops and woven bamboo pendants. “We managed to squeeze 42 seats in there. Now we have 85.” The extra seats came a year later, when the adjacent space opened.
All of their efforts were honored when Shan received a nod from the James Beard Foundation in 2024 as a finalist. This year, Wrisley was a semifinalist for Best Chef: Mountain. Then, in February, he was invited to cook at the James Beard House, an honor reserved for nominees, semifinalists, and rising stars.
Wrisley wants to pursue a project with friends, “We are going to do something associated with small producers of wine from all over the world and small plates of food. I do cook European food.”
He also wants to return to writing. “I’ve taken about 5 years off, but I really would like to write a book about Shan, and about this sort of upheaval in my life, and with myself, my family, and this beautiful little restaurant that resulted in Montana because of that.”
