VANCOUVER, British Columbia — I knew I was about to enter Vancouver’s famed Chinatown, and it wasn’t when I passed under the ornately decorated orange arch, the Millennium Gate. It wasn’t when I walked by a Chinese grocery and saw black mushrooms the size of discuses, piles of flat squid and jars of sea cucumbers of various grotesqueness.
It was when I passed Budget Rent-a-Car. The sign was in Chinese.
Friday night, the opening ceremony will kick off the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. This is the warmest and largest city ever to host the Winter Games. It’s also the most Chinese.
Vancouver has the third-largest Chinese population in North America. According to Statistics Canada, that’s more than 400,000 Chinese out of a metropolitan population of 2 million, or 19 percent.
After spending three days touring the area on a pre-Olympics recon mission in January, I’d say the metro area’s 600 Chinese restaurants are as noteworthy as the Olympic bunting. Vancouver is Hong Kong East, and the food, from the variety to the quality to the tradition, is the perfect Chinese fix for even an old China hand like me.
For those familiar with Vancouver, such as myself who grew up in the Northwest, the landscape has changed. Old Chinatown is really getting old and Vancouver’s seedy underbelly has moved next door. The real Chinatown now is in suburban Richmond, Vancouver’s Aurora except with more strip malls.
The estimated 350,000 visitors expected for the games will come for a taste of the world’s best athletes. They’ll leave with a taste of some of the best Chinese food in the world. I did.
Vancouver’s old Chinatown is older than Vancouver itself. In 1886, the year the city was incorporated, a small Chinese settlement had formed “Shanghai Alley” on the corner of what is now Carrall and Pender streets. When the Great Fire burned the city to the ground that year, 148 acres were leased to Chinese immigrants who received a 10-year agreement as long as they farmed the land.
Lured by work in the sawmills and fish canneries, the migration from the seafaring Canton province began. Today the vibe has changed but not the ethnicity. I was almost the only Caucasian when I stood at that Chinatown birthplace of Carrall and Pender — along with Dragon Liquidation Sales, Jack Chow Insurance, Pekin Chop Suey House and Happy Times Travel.
I made my way up Keefer Street, past markets selling the kind of indecipherable sea creatures and vegetables I last saw in rural China. A chorus of Cantonese, in stereo, shepherded me into Hon’s Won- Ton House.
As I walked in I saw half-pigs hanging on hooks in the window and slabs of ribs soaking in barbecue sauce. Inside, harried waitresses flew around drab tables. The menu, however, is just slightly smaller than Mao’s Little Red Book. It lists 334 items, including such gems as deep-fried cod slices in cream of corn sauce, raw egg with minced beef sauce and, don’t forget, pig feet and fish ball soup.
Fighting a savage cough that I feared infected half the American press corps, I ordered barbecued pork wonton soup. I received a bowl filled with big dumplings packed with thick slabs of pork bobbing in consomme with a load of green onions. It was yummy, filling, and, for whatever reason, knocked my cough out of my lungs. Pretty good medicine for $5.65 ($5.31 U.S.).
“Vancouver Chinese cuisine is so excellent,” said Stephanie Yuen, co-founder of the Chinese Restaurant Awards and a food writer here for 25 years. “Even somebody who has been around like I have, when I come back here I can still have moments of awe.”
Or, if you take a wrong turn, you can have a moment of “Oh, no!” While Pender Street offers some of the city’s best wonton, East Hastings Street, one block north, offers some of the city’s best crack cocaine. The decline of old Chinatown has been attributed to the rise of this area, known as Downtown Eastside.
Driving down one evening I saw scores of people of all ages sharing one apparent fate. Strung out and bedraggled, they huddled in the cool air in front of boarded-up business, cheap hotels and government welfare offices.
Vancouver’s crime rate isn’t very high but East Hastings is the one place many Canadian men won’t walk alone at night. Car break-ins are frequent. Chinatown has lost some business, but you won’t have to fight off crack addicts for a bowl of rice.
Still, some merchants have their own security guards.
“It never ceases to amaze me to see the wall between the two,” said Mia Stansby, the Vancouver Sun food editor who has lived in Vancouver for 40 years. “There’s some spillover but you don’t see the sadness as you do a block off.”
Chinatown’s better half
While parts of Chinatown have changed for the worse, some has also changed for the better. New money. New blood. New ideas. They’ve all joined forces to develop some of the most unique Chinese dishes in the world.
On the other side of the orange Millennium Gate, I stopped into Wild Rice. This is where Vancouver’s gritty origins morph into Vancouver’s glitzy present. The long, narrow room is dark and soft jazz fills the air. It’s where Chinatown meets Manhattan, a perfect place for a romantic Valentine’s Day date.
The menu is as visionary as the new Chinese. B.C. Yukon potato & corn potstickers. Haida gwaii sockeye. Albacore tuna tartare. I ordered Chinese seafood ravioli for $18 ($16.92). In a deep, locally handcrafted wooden dish, plump ravioli were filled with local tuna and salmon and covered in a spicy, green curry tomato cream sauce.
I spent a month in China in 2008 and except for Peking duck in one Beijing dive, this seafood ravioli was the best Chinese dish I’ve ever had. I washed it down with a Vanhatten, made with brandy, cherry bitters and amaretto.
“The Chinese stick with traditional dishes,” said Andrew Wong, the fit, 40-year-old Canadian-born owner and son of Hong Kong parents. “Their kids bring them in. They’re skeptical but by the third dish, I win them over.”
Real Chinatown in ‘burbs
Today, tradition isn’t found down the street. It’s found in Richmond, a booming suburb that’s home to Vancouver’s airport and nearly 400 Chinese restaurants, in every strip mall in town.
This is Vancouver’s real Chinatown. When Hong Kong joined China in 1997, a new wave of immigrants raced across the Pacific. They settled here, where bright new buildings were more appealing than the century-old structures downtown.
The variety of cuisine in Richmond is as vast as in Canton. And, thanks to Canada’s strict hygiene laws, the quality and cleanliness is more consistent than in Hong Kong.
“It’s cutthroat competition,” Yuen said. “In Richmond, you point to any restaurant location and I can tell you, ‘Before this was there, there was that restaurant and before that was this restaurant.’ We lost track.”
I took Wong’s recommendation and went to Sun Sui Wah. Except for being tucked away — guess! — in the back of a strip mall, it’s the prototype Hong Kong restaurant. A huge room with lighting bright enough to illuminate the Opening Ceremonies, squeaky clean Sun Sui Wah is one of Richmond’s landmarks.
I knew the food was authentic. I was the only Caucasian. The signature dish is roasted squab, a baby pigeon marinated and served whole as if it’s ready to fly off the plate.
I picked the sauteed chicken with honey walnut for $13.80 ($12.97). An odd combination but the candied walnuts added the perfect sweetness to chicken bites covered in sesame seeds.
Sun Sui Wah won Yuen’s award for Best Service. In an Olympic year, Vancouver’s Chinese restaurants may win even more awards than the visiting athletes.
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
If you go
Hon’s Wun-Tun House, 108-268 Keefer St., 604-688-0871, ext. 234
Wild Rice, 117 W. Pender St., 604-642-2882,
Sun Sui Wah, 102-4940 No. 3 Road, Richmond, 604-273-8208
HIDDEN GEMS from Vancouver food writer Stephanie Yuen
Congee Noodle House, 141 E. Broadway, 604-879-8221
Lin Chinese Cuisine, 1537 W. Broadway, 604-733-9696, linchinese.ca
Yan’s Garden, 9948 Lougheed Hwy., Burnaby, 604-421-8823, yansgardenrestaurant.ca
