Excerpt from the Introduction

You’ve heard (and probably asked) this question a million times: “Where did you go for dinner?” Sometimes it’s the usual spot, the local bistro around the corner. Sometimes it’s that vegan place or a new Syrian eatery. Maybe it’s the diner that’s been around for 50 years (your parents had their first date there).

It’s not just about what you ate, but where you ate.

If we are indeed what we eat, we are also shaped by the people who made it for us and where we ate it. And the restaurants in this book have done just that: they have impacted the way we eat. Whether they were the first sushi spot, the first fine-dining establishment, or they changed the way we eat out in Canada altogether, the people who owned these restaurants created the dining culture we know today.

Restaurants are so much more than the iconic food they invent or best- of lists they make. They are a combination of the people who operate them, the atmosphere they create and the food they serve. Restaurants are nothing without the people who run them and the people who eat there. The families, the friends, the diners— it’s all a community.

My happiest childhood memories always took place in a restaurant. On every special occasion, my family went to the Taiwan Restaurant in Grand Falls- Windsor, Newfoundland, where I grew up. For me, it was as good as the idea of a McDonald’s PlayPlace (the latter remained an idea, because our home­town didn’t get one until I was in my teens and was too big for the ball pit). At the Taiwan, the waterfall trickled into the little rock pond, the fish tank was filled with koi and the beaded curtains con­cealed private rooms where we would be given hot towels to wipe our hands before the meal. Giant chicken nuggets (sweet- and- sour chicken balls) and a cookie (fortune) at the end of the meal. What more could a kid want?

The Taiwan Restaurant still looks like it did when I was a kid. But through my research for this book, I discovered it didn’t always look like an example of orientalism. I know now that when the restaurant opened in 1964, it didn’t have much decoration at all. This led me down a wormhole of research and realization about who that decor was really for.

On opening day, November 10, 1964, a reporter from the local paper, the Advertiser, described the two- storey building on High Street. Save for its description of the ceramic tile in green, black and orange with “Taiwan” inscribed in Chinese, and a few lanterns hanging from the ceiling, the article is mostly about the restaurant’s trendy terrazzo flooring, garlands of beige drapery and fancy new intercom system. Despite his having emigrated from the Guangdong region of China, sponsored by his father under the family reunion program shortly after Newfoundland joined Canada, it wasn’t until 1984, when owner Tom Chow renovated, that he added North Americanized Chinese elements such as ornate carvings of dragons and phoe­nixes, lanterns, Chinese pagodas and ornate beads closing off the private dining rooms— it just wasn’t part of the Newfoundland restaurant vernacular in the 1960s. Chow’s Chinese decor was meant to satisfy the primarily white clientele.

I started working in restaurants in my 20s while finishing my undergrad degree in history at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Even from my position as a server at Get Stuffed in St. John’s, I could see how hard everyone worked. The chef, a hired gun who was cooking beneath his talents, fed me sweetbreads and foie gras pâté through the pass, while front- of- house staff taught me all there was to know about liquor orders, how to serve wine and the art of “being there but not being there” when it came to service. With the candles flickering, the soft music playing and the delicious food flying out of the kitchen, I was hooked.

Years later, while writing my monthly series about iconic Canadian foods for Food Bloggers of Canada, I delved into our country’s culinary history and uncov­ered the same plotline every time. The origin stories of our early restaurants (and the latest hot spots) all have a place in the Canadian historical compendium. Donairs, California rolls, ginger beef, Japadogs, figgy duff and smoked- meat sandwiches were all invented by those who came to Canada looking for a new life. They built that life by feeding Canadians— both new and old— their tradi­tional recipes, alongside new inventions.

As my food writing career shifted from blog posts to restaurant reviews as the critic for St. John’s only newspaper, the history of restaurants and the people who ran them were always significant to me. It was as important to include the backstory of the owner as it was to rave about their Instagram- worthy dishes. I found myself constantly researching the origin stories of dishes and finding ways to incorporate them into all my freelance work, from writing about long- standing institutions for the CBC to talking about the evolu­tion of butter chicken pizza in Canada for my syndicated food trends column.

The more research I did about the history of Canadian restaurants, the more I real­ized how little has been written. And what’s worse is that, somewhere along the way, we lost the culinary narrative. Almost all our restaurant food is immigrant food. Peameal bacon, tourtière and even Montreal- style bagels were all brought here by Europeans. Butter tarts? Brought here by the French. Even bannock, a dish that evokes divisive conversations about colonialism among Indigenous cooks, was brought here by the Scots. Most diners and the mainstream media don’t grasp that the dishes tourist brochures and listicles tout as historically Canadian were brought here by immi­grants— the English and French settlers who colonized the country (even though our his­tory books don’t label them as immigrants).

We often think of geography as the main influence on our food culture— cod is king in Newfoundland, while in Manitoba the wheat kings reign— but we’d be remiss to ignore the social history that makes up our plates, and which is reflected in our restaurants. Countless cookbook authors, historians, chefs, home cooks and academics have spent the better part of the last few decades trying to define Canadian cuisine, which is like trying to define each separate puzzle piece in a thousand- piece jigsaw. It cannot simply be identified by the wild rice and Red Fife wheat, or the plethora of berries, vegetables and wild game making up the mosaic of flavours. For me, Canadian cuisine is about the peo­ple who cooked our food, and who gave it to us to eat at lunch counters, at mahogany bars and through take-out windows.

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This work is by no means an encyclo­pedia nor a complete history of our coun­try’s restaurants. It’s a love letter. Because the story of Canada’s restaurants, and the people who run them, is big. Really big. As of 2022, there were seventy thousand restaurants across the country. I’m hope­ful that this book will provide a spotlight on the thousands of people who opened restaurants and changed the landscape of our dining scene, even if we didn’t notice while we were slurping on those noodles and shovelling in those french fries. While I made significant effort to include restaurants of all backgrounds, there are many cultures and communi­ties not included in the book for myriad reasons, whether it be a lack of record-keeping by small business owners, biased census takers or racist business practices which would have obstructed minori­ties from owning businesses or finding employment. The conspicuous lack of Indigenous restaurants until chapter 13 is also part of our restaurant history; a consequence of systemic racism towards Indigenous people in Canada ranging from prohibitive game laws to forced assimilation.

For the ease of the reader, the book is organized chronologically by decade. But like most history books, the history of restaurants in Canada and their trends blur over time and plate. In addition to conducting dozens of personal interviews with journalists, chefs and restau­rant owners, I’ve scoured old directories, newspapers and menus to create a picture of the evolution of restaurants in this country, but also to give a face and story to all the people who came here and opened restaurants. Each of these chap­ters is a snapshot of dining in Canada, a moment of enjoyment and nourishment captured. Here’s where we ate.