Looking at the array of Oriental restaurants in Edmonton, it’s hard to believe I first tasted Chinese food as a NAIT student.
My father was Polish, my mother Italian and our meals blended Mediterranean and East European fare. None of those strange alien dishes for my mum.
The first time I tasted chow mein, the stringy texture surprised me. But the foreign spices and flavours popped in my mouth. They intrigued me. I wanted to know more. With friends I’d stroll to Chinatown and explore those wonderfully exotic and mysterious cafes, often relishing the dĂ©cor as much as the fragrant dishes everyone shared. Those cherished memories and stories still linger in my mind.
It’s precisely these kinds of stories that Linda Tzang, curator of cultural communities for the Royal Alberta Museum (RAM), wants to hear. Tzang is working on a two-year Chinese restaurant project tentatively titled Chop Suey on the Prairies.
“Every small town has a Chinese restaurant. If it didn’t have one, it lamented the fact it didn’t have one and people would have to go to the next town. It goes counter to the prejudice that was around. I’d like to investigate Chinese restaurants in small towns and why the attachment to them,” says Tzang.
Work is under way to create a large exhibit of Chinese restaurant artifacts, photographs and stories that will open at RAM in 2012. To get the buzz going, Tzang has organized a mini-exhibit that will start touring the province this October hitting 12 locales — Peace River, Onoway, Stony Plain, Caroline, Sundre, Lac Cardinal, Medicine Hat, Wetaskiwin, Trochu, Millet, Donalda and Bentley.
“When it gets to a small town, they have the opportunity to contribute stories and they will feed into the bigger exhibit in 2012.”
Ironically, since the earliest documented establishment in 1911 in southern Alberta, Chinese restaurants tended to serve primarily western foods. It wasn’t until the sixties that some urban restaurants felt secure enough to serve Chinese food. And it was a decade later that Chinese food appeared on rural menus.
Fort Macleod’s Silver Grill, celebrating its 100th anniversary, is an example of living history. “You have a 100-year old saloon bar next to Formica tables next to the pizza oven next to the coffee machine.”
Medicine Hat’s Pink Lantern was a popular hangout maintained in mint condition. With its pink Formica tables and booths, “It was a 1960’s diner frozen in time.”
The Buffalo Café in Wainwright owned by the Pon family provided a popular western menu. They later sold the café and opened the Lingnan in Edmonton. From its initial opening, this high-end restaurant with white tablecloths became a local flagship for Chinese cuisine and finely tempered steak dinners.
To fully complete the exhibit, Tzang is looking for the ordinary, everyday artifacts such as menus, pictures, signs, mirrors, fixtures and pieces of the interiors such as doors. “We just need to be able to tie it back to a Chinese restaurant.”
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