Christophe Jiu Long Yu has been in Montreal for three years now. The Chongqing-born ITHQ graduate loves the city and his life here, But there’s something he’s doing his best to change.
“Chinese food is always evolving in China,” he says. “But not in Montreal. It’s outdated.”
Current restaurant culture in China is on a scale unimaginable to people who’ve never experienced it, especially considering that private (vs. state owned) restaurants didn’t even exist fifty years ago. Expertise in cooking was rebuilt from scratch after traditions disappeared in waves of political upheaval. Now, from farm-to-table to fast food empires, Peking duck to snail noodles, China is a dining paradise at every price point.
Montreal, with a Chinese restaurant scene largely predominated by legacy restaurants in a fading Chinatown, has yet to catch up.
Yu and his culinary partner, Guangzhou (Canton) native Nora Lou, are putting their considerable energy towards fixing the situation their own way. In late 2024 they founded the popup Flying Tables, determined to share their understanding of Chinese regional food. They’ve now got a half-dozen events under their belt, expanding their clientele and connections with restaurants across the city, from the Lao-inspired Sep Lai last summer for a Sichuan pop-up to Hof Sucrée for Chinese New Year pastries and Le Super Qualité for a Malaysian feast.
Learning through eating
Yu is currently serving up Chinese regional rice noodles and small plates inspired by Guizhou, Yunnan, and Hokkien traditions at his day job at Sichuan rice noodle haven J’ai Feng. It’s no wonder that he and chef/owner Anita Feng found each other.
Feng has always been committed to educate and delight diners through their palates as one of Montreal’s most visible faces educating about Chinese regional food, ingredients, and techniques. She was named the Révélation de l’année in 2021 as part of Les Lauriers de la Gastronomie Québécoise, and her diminutive shop on Beaubien East became a destination for fans keen to understand more about Sichuan peppercorns, knife noodles, and chili oil.
Feng’s culinary career started in 2014. Her first restaurant, Trilogie, was a family project she’d been roped into. Her parents were closing their grocery store in Chinatown and this was part of their retirement plan.
“The more I worked there, the more I realized that no one knew what real Chinese food was. Popular dishes like chop suey, spring rolls, and General Tao chicken weren’t even Chinese food for me,” Feng says. “That’s what motivated me afterwards to learn more.”
She closed Trilogie and moved to Sichuan in 2017 to study cooking, diving deeper into her passion. Ten years later, she feels that there could be so much more going on in the city.
Teochew in the Plateau
Chanel Dai, founder of Teochew Foodie, had the same feeling as Feng: “There’s still a lot of space to develop authentic Chinese food here compared to Toronto and Vancouver,” she says.
She and her parents started making southern China Chaozhou (or Teochew)-style wontons at home, expanding into a tiny storefront in Saint-Henri in 2020. As the demand grew, the production kitchen and retail shop found a new home on Saint-Denis in the Plateau, with her father’s expertise as a master duck stock expert and her mother’s sleek chang fen (rice noodle rolls) garnering fans.
“Each (region) is so different in China. Even within Canton province, for people who didn’t grow up in that culture, it can be hard to understand. We don’t compromise on the flavour,” Dai says, echoing Feng when she asserts that “we don’t do North American Chinese.”
Teochew Foodie closed their retail presence to focus on the frozen wonton side of the business, with her parents still making the handmade wontons and Chaozhou-style crispy chili oils in a production kitchen. With over 30 points of sale around the city and distribution agreements with large supermarket chains, the appetite for regional fare—even if consumers don’t fully realize where exactly it’s from—is going strong.
While the original waves of immigration to Montreal sprung from southern China—Hong Kong, Guangdong, and Fujian province, as represented in Chinatown and more recently in Brossard—recent waves brought others from the north, northwest, and eastern parts of the country. There’s northern Chinese energy from Liaoning province in the Concordia/ Ste-Catherine West area known as Shaughnessy Village, and Xinjiang restaurants, with their hearty Turkic lamb-and-noodle halal dishes are scattered from Brossard to Ville St-Laurent to Lasalle.
A wave from the east
Wen Hui Zhang grew up in Nanjing, in eastern China’s Jiangsu province on the Yangtze River, and is hoping to bring those flavours to the Plateau this summer.
“Our food is delicate and ingredient forward, with smaller portions,” Wen says.
Known as ‘the land of fish and rice,’ it’s hard to find food from Jiangsu or nearby coastal Shanghai in town. Wen and her partner Elliot Latendresse hope to make those kinds of introductions when they open her teahouse Thé Jinjin and his restaurant Honnête Kid in the same location at the corner of Marianne and Drolet in the Plateau. They’re currently planning to share the space between her tea in the daytime with Latedresse’s light snacks and lunch, and his food at night, with Wen’s tea creations.
“I want this project to create a space that’s not intimidating for people that aren’t as familiar with the culture,” Wen adds.
And like Yu, Feng, and Dai, the element of education goes hand in hand with innovation in what they’re planning. Drawing on her successful pop-ups, Wen’s tea offerings will feature her signature matcha and hojicha drinks, adding Chinese elements like oolong and jasmine, served in ceramics made by local Asian artists.
Latendresse, an ITHQ graduate with extensive travel in China and work experience in Korea, is crafting a menu with favourites like handmade noodles and charcoal skewers. A summery menu will feature you tiao crullers with soymilk dipping custard and an asparagus twist on spicy gan bian niu rou si (dry-fried beef slivers). Latendresse is thinking about textures, too, with a salad featuring crispy lotus root and wood ear mushrooms.
Making what they want to eat
While new spots like Chou Chou experiment with Chinese flavours through French and Italian technique, a different kind of experimentation rooted in kitchen memories is happening at Hochelaga’s recently opened Maison JoFei, a spot that’s quickly garnered the loyalty and enthusiasm of the Flying Tables and Thé Jin Jin teams.
Chef-owners’ Joseph Nguyen and Fung Fei Ho have a repertoire of culinary memories from him growing up in a Vietnamese family in Canada and her Hong Kong, Guangdong, and Hakka Chinese background. Laughing, they admit that “We make what we want to eat,” is their unofficial motto.
There’s no specific doctrine ruling their homey Asian kitchen, with HK shrimp toast, Vietnamese beef stew bo kho, Hainan chicken rice, Hakka suan zi pan ‘gnocchi’ made from taro and tapioca with pork, mushrooms, and dried shrimp, all on the same menu. The openness of their approach might be because the two met working at Bottega in Little Italy, he as sous chef and gelato maker, and she as garde-manger. Their soulful mix of generously portioned dishes reflect Nguyen’s approach to let things flow as they will in the kitchen and Fung’s self-confessed love for watching people eat what she cooks.
New stories for new flavours
Montreal has a much smaller Chinese and Asian population than Toronto or Vancouver, but that’s not stopping these chefs from believing in what they’re doing and wanting to share the taste of something different. There’s a long way to go in educating Montrealers the difference between Sichuan’s numbing peppercorns and Guizhou’s herby, fermented, sour flavours, and the connection between Chaozhou rice noodles and Pad Thai.
It’s a far cry from the chop suey and General Tao that Anita Feng had to learn about when she moved to Canada as a ten-year-old.
“We’re sharing Chinese cuisine and culture through rice noodles,” says Yu about J’ai Feng. “We have different toppings and different sides; that’s our way of telling different stories about different destinations.”
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