Bamboo Restaurant
Known Name(s)
Bamboo Restaurant
Address
755 S. State St. Salt Lake City, UT
Establishment Type(s)
Restaurant
Physical Status
Demolished
Description
Matchbook image courtesy of University of Utah J. Willard Marriott Library
Ad from Salt Lake Telegram, July 5, 1948, page 5.
Detailed History
Ping York Gin and his wife, Tom See Gin, opened the Coconut Garden Café in 1945 on State St. in downtown Salt Lake City. They added a sister restaurant, the Bamboo Garden Café, in 1948 just a few blocks away. Both Ping and Tom were born in Canton, China in the early 1890’s. They emigrated to the U.S. in their youth and married in Washington D.C. in 1921. By 1930 the couple had moved to Park City’s Chinatown, where they were busy with six children under eight-years old. Ping listed himself as the manager of a laundromat, and Tom cared for their family. The 1940 census recorded the Gin family, still in Park City. Ping listed his occupation as “cook,” and the family had grown to eleven children. In the early 1940s Ping and Tom moved to Salt Lake’s Avenues neighborhood and began life as downtown entrepreneurs. The family prepared Cantonese food in both the Bamboo and Coconut Garden Cafe. In 1951, the Salt Lake Tribune reported an armed robbery during the crowded dinner seating at the Bamboo Garden. The gunman took $50 from the cashier. In 1958 another notice in the Salt Lake Tribune announced the Gins’ retirement. Ping died in 1970, leaving his wife, twelve children, and twenty-four grandchildren. Tom died a few years later at the age of seventy-seven. Both are buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery.
Sources consulted:
The Salt Lake Tribune, August 26, 1948, page 27.
The Salt Lake Tribune, May 09, 1945, page 18.
National Archives, Lists of Chinese Applying for Admission to the United States through the Port of San Francisco, California, 1903-1947; Microfilm Number: M1476; Reel Number: 23; Record Group: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004- 85.
Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line], Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002.
Federal Census 1940, Park City, Summit, Utah; Roll: m-t0627-04218; Page: 6B; Enumeration District: 22-18
The Salt Lake Tribune, Dec 09,1951, page 17.
The Salt Lake Tribune, May 03, 1958, page 30.
Park Record, “Obituaries,” 09/03/1970, https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6qz3dmv/8136758
Ancestry.com, Cemetery Index from Selected States, 1847-2010 [database on-line], Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.
