Manly's Papi Chulo restaurant will close on May 1, with owner Justin Hemmes's culinary divining rod shifting away from Papi's Americana cuisine to Asian.

"We'll open Queen Chow Manly there [in] early June after a four-week turnaround [for a quick redesign]," Mr Hemmes said.

The venture would be an offshoot of Merivale's Queen Chow restaurant in Enmore, with senior food crew at the inner-west venue overseeing the Manly start-up, the bar tsar and restaurateur said.

Rumours of an Asian reboot have been bobbing around the harbourside venue for months, but the early favourite was thought to be a transplant of Mr Wong.

"It was toss-up between Mr Wong and Queen Chow but we went with Queen Chow. We'd like to do another Mr Wong sometime, but somewhere else - it'd be spectacular," Mr Hemmes said.

Merivale had a close look at the Manly market before judging the area short of Chinese restaurants.

"Chinese is the right thing for Manly ... everyone loves Chinese," Mr Hemmes said.