Open That Bottle

...with Winnie Chan

BY LINDA GARSON PHOTO BY DONG KIM

rowing up in a family of food lovers, as a little girl in Hong Kong, Winnie Chan’s parents would always be taking her to restaurants to taste the food, and she has many delicious memories of the ambience and cuisine of these times. Her mother was also an excellent cook, and she was fascinated with these recipes, featuring some of them in her restaurants even today.

Yet she dreamed of owning beauty salons, offering facials and learning how to perfect wedding makeup for brides, so Chan’s career started along a very different route, and as a young woman, she opened two mobile beauty salons.

Things changed when she met her husband, also a food lover, with parents that ran restaurants in Hong Kong, and while still a teenager in the late ‘70s, they started making and selling street food from carts. It was hard work, which is something that has never deterred Chan, and it was several years later until they were able to open a bricks and mortar restaurant.

Once children came along, and with the Canadian government encouraging people from Hong Kong to immigrate if they had resources to open a business, the Chans came on a holiday to see what life might be like in Canada, starting in Red Deer and then visiting Calgary, Toronto, and Vancouver. They wanted their three children to learn English, and study and graduate here. In comparing the cities, it was only in the last week of their vacation that they decided to settle in Calgary.

They felt comfortable because of the people, who Chan says were kind and nice, as well as other mitigating factors. “Vancouver’s very rainy, but I feel Calgary is so interesting, as in one day they have four seasons,” she laughs. And in 1993, they moved to Calgary, opening their first restaurant, Calgary Court, in ’94. The immigration policy was that they had to open a business and employ people within their first two years – and they were brave, putting all their money into something that they didn't know would be successful or not.

They felt lucky as the restaurant was lined up down the street with so many immigrants from Asia at that time, such that they had to open the basement too to make it two stories, eventually renovating to turn the lower floor into kitchens for food preparation.

Following the success of the first restaurant, and wanting to offer different types of Asian cuisine, Chan cleverly made the decision, rather than have a huge menu at one restaurant, she would open a BBQ restaurant, Sun’s on Centre Street N, and Misai Japanese Restaurant on 32 Avenue NE. Fortunately the timing was perfect as Jackie Chan was filming Shanghai Noon in Calgary at the time and he loved the restaurant!

Now, the Taste of Asia Group has six locations with eight restaurants: T.Pot China Bistro shares a space and kitchen

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with Cafe H.K, and Forbidden City Seafood and Dim Sum restaurant shares a space and kitchen with Pebble Street, a Hong Kong style cafe. This means that they can host weddings for up to 300 people in the shared spaces.

So what bottle is Chan saving for a special occasion?

A 500 mL bottle of Kweichow Moutai sits on the table – an organic, 53 percent ABV baijiu, produced only in Maotai, a picturesque small town in the southwestern province of Guizhou. As China’s national spirit, it’s the only alcoholic beverage presented as an official gift by Chinese embassies overseas to foreign heads of state. It’s in very short supply though, particularly in Canada. Chan has had this bottle for around seven years, and used to sell it in the restaurant for around $1,000.

And when will she open it?

She hasn’t been able to travel to see her family since the start of Covid, “I miss my children and grandchildren very much,” she says. “I hope to take a holiday and visit them, as I’m missing the happiest moments - the baby time - as my grandkids are all growing.”

Chan will wait until the family is together to open the bottle, she’s hoping for Chinese New Year: “And that will be a very special occasion,” she says.