Chinese food near me how to#
“I was 18 when I decided I had to learn how to write my own name (in Chinese). It was all I knew how to do.”įor Chin, who is in her mid-30s, teaching others about the food of her heritage first required finding out what being Asian means to her - as someone who was born in Hawaii to a Samoan-Hawaiian mother and a Singaporean-Chinese father, spent her adolescence in New York, and later moved to Toronto. That made me cook Chinese food to educate more people about it. “A lot of (Asian) elders were being attacked, and even though my grandmother has passed, that’s the first thing I thought of. “The pandemic highlighted the injustice already happening in the world, and it (was) caught on social media because for a while social media was the only window you had,” said Chin. Part of that learning comes from chefs sharing more about culinary techniques and the origins of Chinese food to try and prevent diners who didn’t grow up with Chinese food from undervaluing or misunderstanding the cuisine, and by extension, its people. Right now, my generation of cooks and chefs are reiterating their version of Chinese food, and people are starting to understand that immigrant food is more than food courts and street food, and it’s time to learn what this cuisine represents,” said Chin, who is also the chef at The Avling Kitchen and Brewery in Leslieville. “Our generation understands we cook from nostalgia and isolate different feelings and memories. Eva Chin is the co-founder of The Soy Luck Club, a dinner series that explores regional Chinese banquet hall cooking and what authenticity means to someone of Asian descent growing up in North America versus China.