It’s a turning point for Edmonton’s Chinatown.
Construction of the Valley Line LRT may be good news in the long term if it brings more people to the area. But in the short term, it’s split the community, dividing the original south Chinatown from the newer Chinatown further north.
The downtown arena has also shaken things up. To be sure, it’s brought new business to some restaurants. But during hockey games and major concerts, parking is hard to come by for people who just want to grab dinner.
And then there are concerns over new safe injection sites, and how they might change an area that’s already home to multiple shelters and drop-in centres.
But it’s also a time of Chinatown renewal, a time when a new generation is discovering, or rediscovering, one of Edmonton’s most resilient, historic and vibrant neighbourhoods.
For the last couple of years, Edmonton food blogger Sharon Yeo, 34, and her buddy, Freya Fu, 29, the engagement co-ordinator at the NAIT International Centre, have been leading tours and food crawls designed to introduce people to Chinatown’s hidden gems.
“Obviously, walking tours in the winter are difficult to pull off, but we wanted to continue the momentum,” said Yeo.
A poster for Edmonton’s first Chinatown Dining Week.
And so this week they unveiled their latest initiative — Edmonton’s first Chinatown Dining Week.
Inspired by the success of Downtown Dining Week, Yeo and Fu’s event showcases five very different Chinatown restaurants serving very different cuisines. Each restaurant offers a set two-course menu for an eminently reasonable $15. The festival started Jan. 20 and will run until next Sunday, Jan. 28.
You can choose from Vietnamese pho at the King Noodle House, Hong Kong-style western fusion cuisine at the Taipan Cafe, or curry and coconut rice at the Viphalay Laos and Thai Restaurant. You can cook your own food in bubbling broth at Asian Express Hot Pot, or sample the unique cuisine of China’s southwest Guangxi province at Cui Hua Gui Lin Noodle House.
“We wanted to start small and start strong,” said Yeo.
Of course, it’s a great chance for people to try new kinds of food and for Chinatown restaurateurs to reach out to new customers. And so far, it seems to be working. Fu says people were already lined up outside Viphalay when it opened at 5 p.m. Sunday. If anything, she says, the challenge has been for the small showcased restaurants to keep up with the sudden boom in business.
“We meant this to be a little test pilot project,” said Fu. “We totally didn’t know it was going to take off like this.”
But the festival isn’t just about selling soup. It’s about changing the way people think about Edmonton’s “inner city” in general and about Chinatown in particular.
“I’ve always been about bringing people together and building community,” said Fu.
“People get to know places when they spend time in them,” said Yeo.
For these small, family-run restaurants, that’s important, too. The parents of Linda Hoang, 28, a food blogger and digital media consultant, own and operate the King Noodle House, one of the five featured eateries.
Often times, said Hoang, even people who come down to Chinatown for lunch or dim sum are nervous about going there for dinner, especially in the winter when it gets dark early.
“And a lot of these are not fancy-looking places. My parents’ restaurant is fairly hole-in-the-wall. But there are so many great, varied restaurants here, with fantastic food and affordable prices.”
As Chinatown struggles to define its future, it’s inspiring to see a young and passionate generation so committed to celebrating its idiosyncrasies and its charms, and to sharing them with the whole city. This is the sort of community energy Chinatown needs, as it faces the challenges of the Ice District on one side and social welfare agencies on the other. And it’s a neighbourhood we could so easily lose, as people and businesses head to the suburbs.
Now, it’s up to the rest of the city to accept the invitation, to help keep Chinatown hopping.
“I know people who have lived here their whole lives and never stepped into a Chinatown store,” Hoang said. “But right here, right in your backyard, are all these flavours from all over the world.”
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