For olive oil entrepreneur, a tasteful reconnection

Natalie Wheen, Founder of olive oil business Avlaki

Chinese food has never ceased to fascinate Natalie Wheen, who was born in Shanghai and grew up on Chinese food but has rarely visited the country since leaving for the United Kingdom in 1957.

After a successful career as a radio broadcaster, Wheen has gone through a significant career shift to run an upmarket olive oil business, Avlaki, and China naturally became a key market for her business.

“Good olive oil would naturally go well with Chinese food, because the Chinese people put so much care into making food that is fresh and flavorsome,” she said.

Among the Chinese dishes she regularly cooks at home with olive oil are steamed fish, stir-fried meat and vegetables, soup, and stir-fried rice with vegetables and eggs. But to convince the Chinese consumer is altogether another matter, because olive oil has been widely available in China only for a few years and the limited supply is mostly comprised of mass-market brands.

“I really want to teach Chinese consumers about the difference between high-quality olive oil and mass-market brands. I do recognize not everyone in China will be able to afford it, as it is targeting a distinct market, but I believe the potential is there,” said Wheen.

Her family has had a long and deep connection with China stretching over generations, starting with her great-grandfather Edward Wheen, who arrived in Shanghai in 1874 as a businessman, focusing mostly on imports.

Many years later, during the Great Depression, the Wheen company went bankrupt, and her father started a career working for the British chemical company Imperial Chemical Industries in China.

Wheen’s mother’s side of the family came from Russia. Her uncle, Colonel Alexander Tatarinoff, was military attache at the Russian embassy in Beijing in 1917 and after leaving his native country ahead of the revolution, spent the rest of his life in China.

Her parents married in Qing- dao in 1937, and Wheen was born in Shanghai in 1949. Two years later, Wheen’s family moved to Hong Kong, where they stayed until 1957. During those years Wheen’s nanny, whom she called by the polite term “amah”, cooked a great array of Chinese dishes.

Wheen’s father was the company secretary of ICI, so her parents spent most evenings at parties and left her in her amah’s charge.

“She would always prepare some Chinese food for me to have with her, so my No 1 comfort food has always been Chinese cooking. I think my palate has been trained to the subtleties of tastes and textures of Chinese food.”

These fond childhood memories of China have cultivated a sense of belonging for Wheen, and when her family moved to the UK she initially felt sad. “I hated coming to the UK as February in England is cold and wet,” she said.

She said she still has many objects at home to remind her of China, which she took when she left the country, including silk fabrics, cushions, a jade tree with green stones as leaves, and a long table made of dark-colored wood in the Chinese style.