Chop Suey Nation
The Legion Cafe and Other Stories from Canada's Chinese Restaurants
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4.4 • 23 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
In 2016, Globe and Mail reporter Ann Hui drove across Canada, from Victoria to Fogo Island, to write about small-town Chinese restaurants and the families who run them. It was only after the story was published that she discovered her own family could have been included—her parents had run their own Chinese restaurant, The Legion Cafe, before she was born. This discovery, and the realization that there was so much of her own history she didn’t yet know, set her on a time-sensitive mission: to understand how, after generations living in a poverty-stricken area of Guangdong, China, her family had somehow wound up in Canada.
Chop Suey Nation: The Legion Cafe and Other Stories from Canada’s Chinese Restaurantsweaves together Hui’s own family history—from her grandfather’s decision to leave behind a wife and newborn son for a new life, to her father’s path from cooking in rural China to running some of the largest “Western” kitchens in Vancouver, to the unravelling of a closely guarded family secret—with the stories of dozens of Chinese restaurant owners from coast to coast. Along her trip, she meets a Chinese-restaurant owner/small-town mayor, the owner of a Chinese restaurant in a Thunder Bay curling rink, and the woman who runs a restaurant alone, 365 days a year, on the very remote Fogo Island. Hui also explores the fascinating history behind “chop suey” cuisine, detailing the invention of classics like “ginger beef” and “Newfoundland chow mein,” and other uniquely Canadian fare like the “Chinese pierogies” of Alberta.
Hui, who grew up in authenticity-obsessed Vancouver, begins her journey with a somewhat disparaging view of small-town “fake Chinese” food. But by the end, she comes to appreciate the essentially Chinese values that drive these restaurants—perseverance, entrepreneurialism and deep love for family. Using her own family’s story as a touchstone, she explores the importance of these restaurants in the country’s history and makes the case for why chop suey cuisine should be recognized as quintessentially Canadian.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
We think Ann Hui’s way of digging into her personal heritage—eating her way across Canada’s small-town Chinese restaurants—is equally brilliant and mouthwatering. In her illuminating book, she shows the link between these outposts and the expansion of Canada’s rail system, and also examines how these mom-and-pop shops adapted or abandoned “authentic” dishes in favour of fried, salty, dopamine-jacking fare like Chinese pierogi or chop suey—a Canadian invention that has become a kind of cuisine in and of itself. Hui’s book explains how members of the Chinese diaspora create innovative hybrid cultures in their new homes—and it’s a true story of hope and ingenuity.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this insightful culinary history and memoir, Globe & Mail journalist Hui tells the stories of "chop suey" restaurants and the immigrant families behind many of them. Born in British Columbia, Canada, to Chinese parents, Hui first encountered the cuisine (known for "crispy spring rolls, kung pao chicken and wonton soup") as a school meal so different from her mom's home cooking that she "barely recognized anything on the plate." Challenging the popular notion that "fake" Chinese is "garish and lacking in refinement," Hui sets off on a cross-country road trip asking purveyors in near-identical small-town restaurants: "How did you wind up here?" She reveals the origin stories of ubiquitous "made-in-North-America" dishes such as ginger beef, and, of course, chop suey or "dsop sooy" literally "Assorted scraps. Bits and pieces. This and that." When Hui learns her own parents started their lives in Canada running such a restaurant, she embarks on a mission to learn about their past. What she discovers in kitchens across Canada and in her own home is a pattern of "creativity, perseverance and resourcefulness" that proves chop suey may be "the most Chinese of all." This thoughtful look at an often dismissed cuisine will enthrall foodies and history buffs alike.
