Dobe & Andy wants to change how you think about dining in Chinatown

You could say Eric Ku has a problem with the way people think about eating in Chinatown.

Not the food, mind you—the duck hanging in Dobe & Andy's window still gets the two-day char siu treatment, the same labour-intensive air-drying process that his father Andy perfected when he opened the restaurant 42 years ago.

The problem is everything that happens after you walk through the door.

"Chinatown service is not just like, hey, take your order, drop it off, and see you again," Ku says, leaning on a table of his St-Urbain diner that's been his second home since childhood. "I don't like that. I want to change that."

It's a Thursday afternoon post-lunch rush, and Ku is explaining his vision alongside Webster Galman, his business partner and the restaurant's de facto head chef. Lunch went OK, Web says, with the kind of matter-of-factness that comes from years in Montreal's top kitchens. Galman spent time at Garde Manger, Vin Papillon, and September Surf before joining forces with Ku three years ago to take over the family business.

Now, with Ku's brother Edmund and partner Raymond having moved on, it's just the two of them running a restaurant that's become something of a bellwether for Chinatown's future.

Room for revolution

The timing of them sitting down to talk feels significant. Ku's first child is due in a month, Chinatown has finally secured heritage protection after years of community organizing, and the neighbourhood is slowly emerging from the safety crises that once had Ku considering an exit strategy. These days, the conversation has shifted from survival to what comes next.

What comes next, according to Ku, starts with rethinking everything people expect from a Chinese diner—except the food. The duck still hangs crispy and glistening in the front window, the char siu still marinates for two days, and the roast pork belly still gets the kind of attention that would soonr make sense in a fine-dining kitchen. But the experience around that food? That's where Ku sees room for revolution.

"When I go to a restaurant, I'm like, what the hell?" he says. "So do I want someone coming to my restaurant and feeling the same way? No. I want them to have a good time. I want them to enjoy themselves. And not just with the food—but with the people here, and what we're offering."

Drinks are new. So is the evening service on weekends, and ambitious pop-up menus exploring everything from Bistro Amerigo-inspired Italian dishes to an upcoming Jamaican collaboration with Jessica Daley, and the general sense that Dobe & Andy is writing its own rules about what a 42-year-old family restaurant can become. It's the kind of evolution that might seem like reinvention elsewhere, but here it feels more like coming home to something that was always true about cha chaan teng culture.

"The soul of the Chinese diner started with mixing cultures," Ku explains. "In Hong Kong, it was expats asking for pork chop or tomato sauce with noodles. They started making that stuff, and that was real fusion that started over there—kind of like what we're doing here. I'm a Chinese kid that grew up in Quebec."

"For example," he continues, "I like Quebecois food. I love Quebecois food. Let's play with Quebecois food."

Stark realities

This philosophy runs deeper than menu innovations. Walk through Chinatown today and you'll see a neighbourhood caught between preservation and progress, where heritage plaques can mark buildings that house everything from traditional dim sum parlours to late-night rave spots (if you know where to look). Dobe & Andy sits in the middle of this tension, literally and figuratively—housed in the Place du Quartier building that's become a microcosm of the area's evolution.

"I'd love to see more Chinese, just more Asian folks in general coming in," Ku says, watching the lunch crowd that's increasingly diverse. "But you look at it, and the rent is high, and it doesn't make sense for a lot of people."

The reality is stark: where families once came for Saturday morning dim sum and afternoon shopping, parking spots sit empty and storefronts change hands. The Chinese schools that used to anchor weekend family traditions have dispersed to LaSalle, Laval, and the South Shore. "That Saturday-Sunday family day in Chinatown is gone," Ku acknowledges. For now, anyway.

But instead of chasing those families to the suburbs, Dobe & Andy is adapting to who's actually walking through the door. The government mandate bringing office workers back downtown four days a week has helped lunch numbers—Ku's seeing about 120 covers now, up from pandemic lows but still short of the couple hundred they used to serve. The strategy is to meet people where they are while slowly changing expectations about what Chinatown can offer.

"I want to create this atmosphere over here in Chinatown," Ku says. "And I love the idea that if the other Chinese places see it, they'll want to change, too. Hopefully, for the next generation, that's what it's going to be."

Craft in translation

The foundation for all this change remains the barbecue that made Dobe & Andy a destination in the first place. Walk into the kitchen and you'll find Galman and his team maintaining processes that haven't changed much since Andy Ku brought a custom roaster up from Toronto in the 1980s. The duck still gets sewn up and inflated with an air compressor to separate skin from meat, seasoned in five-spice and hoisin, hung overnight to dry, then roasted at temperatures the cooks judge by flame height rather than thermometer readings.

"It's a lot of work," Ku says, understating the reality of starting marinades two days before service, managing multiple proteins at different stages of the process, and timing everything so that the window display stays stocked with glistening meat throughout the day. "But we compromised on having whole pigs. Just having the belly—for me, it was always what people wanted anyways."

The shift from breaking down whole hogs to working with belly cuts happened about six years ago, part of a gradual modernization that's made the operation more sustainable without sacrificing quality. It's the kind of practical evolution that defines their approach—respect the craft, but don't be precious about processes that no longer serve you.

This balance extends to the menu, where char siu and roast duck sit alongside experiments that would have confused customers a decade ago. The matcha cannoli from their recent Amerigo pop-up raised eyebrows, but it also packed the dining room. "It keeps us creative," Ku explains. "It keeps our minds moving. It's something different from the regular mundane things that we do."

The pop-ups serve multiple purposes—they draw new crowds, keep the kitchen staff engaged, and test ideas that might eventually join the permanent menu. More importantly, they position Dobe & Andy as a place that's thinking about food rather than just serving it, a distinction that matters in a neighbourhood fighting perceptions about being stuck in the past.

The community question

None of this happens in a vacuum. Chinatown's recent heritage designation was the result of years of organizing by groups like the JIA Foundation and the Chinatown Roundtable, community efforts that successfully fought off speculative development and secured protection for the neighbourhood's historic core. But heritage status brings its own challenges: how do you evolve within protected parameters, and what does preservation mean for a living, working community?

Ku is pragmatic about these tensions, recognizing the structural challenges facing Chinatown businesses. While some established operators have the advantage of property ownership that cushions them against rising costs, newcomers face a different calculus. "Imagine a guy having to come in, and they'll have to pay $8,000, maybe $10,000 in rent," he says. "You can just do it in a neighbourhood that has more foot traffic, more parking, less crackheads."

The "crackhead" comment isn't throwaway—it reflects the daily reality of operating in a neighbourhood where social services are inadequate and visible homelessness creates genuine challenges for businesses. Ku's team deals with break-ins, has to clean human waste from the back alley, and calls police regularly.

"I feel like until someone gets hurt, they won't actually do something about it," Ku says. "We've been telling them for years." It's a frustration shared across Chinatown's business community, where heritage protection doesn't address the immediate challenges of operating in a neighbourhood that city services seem to have deprioritized.

But staying matters. When Ku considered leaving during the worst of the safety issues a few years ago, it wasn't just about his family's restaurant—it was about what happens when second-generation businesses give up on the neighbourhood their parents built.

"A lot of the older restaurants, the kids didn't take over," he notes. "They didn't continue their legacy."

What stays, what changes

Plans brewing for Dobe & Andy reflect this balance between evolution and preservation. Renovations in the mix see a basic layout that will remain—the awkward mezzanine level created by the building's underground garage, the counter seating that puts diners close to the action, the open kitchen that's been the restaurant's heart for decades. But the back dining room will expand, the bar service will get proper infrastructure, and the whole space will feel more intentional about creating the kind of atmosphere Ku envisions.

"It's gonna stay the same, but more of this area over here," Galman explains, gesturing toward the raised section that's become a gathering spot for industry folks and regulars. The goal is to make the space work better for how people actually want to use it.

This pragmatic approach extends to staffing, where Ku relies on experienced hands to help elevate service standards while teaching younger cooks the difference between taking an order and creating an experience.

These aren't revolutionary concepts, and the team at Dobe & Andy know that—but they are basics that many Chinatown establishments never prioritized, partly because the customer base didn't demand them and partly because margins were too tight to invest in refinements. But as the neighbourhood changes and competition increases, these details matter more.

The next chapter

Sitting in Dobe & Andy on that Thursday afternoon, watching the easy chemistry between Ku and Galman as they plan for the evening, it's clear this isn't just about one restaurant anymore. They've become part of a generation that will determine whether Chinatown evolves into something vital or calcifies into a tourist attraction.

The signs are promising. The heritage designation has stabilized development pressure while community organizing has created frameworks for inclusive growth. The Asian Night Market has returned, bringing crowds and energy to streets that felt empty for years. New businesses are opening—some run by longtime community members, others by newcomers who respect what they're joining.

Dobe & Andy's role in this renaissance isn't to be everything to everyone, but to demonstrate what's possible when you honour tradition while embracing change. The barbecue that hangs in their window represents thousands of hours of craft and decades of reputation. The hospitality they're building around it represents a vision of what Chinatown dining can become.

"I just want them to have a good meal and a good experience," Ku says when asked about his hopes for the restaurant's future. "Really just having a good restaurant experience." It sounds simple, but in a neighbourhood where expectations have been set low for too long? Simple can be revolutionary.

Galman starts prep for the evening service. Ku checks his phone—another month and everything changes again with the arrival of his first child. But for now, there's work to do, traditions to maintain, and new standards to set.

The future of Chinatown—a big part of it, anyway—is being written in meals coming out of Dobe & Andy.