Global has an interesting piece – the video’s worth watching – about how the cuisine of Chinatown is the main thing keeping the area alive. Interesting chats with various chefs and their ideas.
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DeWolf 12:53 on 2022-02-05 Permalink
I would argue that it’s the only Chinatown in Canada whose culinary offerings have actually improved in recent years. There’s a lot of interesting new mainland Chinese restaurants, plus old-school ones like Monnan and Dobe & Andy that have been given fresh energy by the second generation.
For all the talk about Montreal Chinatown’s struggles, it’s positively thriving compared to the historic Chinatowns in Vancouver and Calgary, which were bustling as recently as 10 years ago but are now verging on being ghost towns.
Kate 14:58 on 2022-02-05 Permalink
Sad to hear, but good for us.
Ian 19:11 on 2022-02-05 Permalink
I love Montreal’s Chinatown but it is SO tiny. Dobe and Andy are great, Mon Nan is also great, there’s excellent Korean (Chez Bong) and Vietnamese (Mỹ Cảnh) as well, especially excellent for such a small area. Chez Maxim is a gem. A little further out the whole noodle strip on Ste Kitty is great too, I especially like PM. Lots of very good Korean and Japanese places opening up over the last 10 years. For sure if you work or live downtown these are excellent food options especially considering what a bland desert of mall food most of downtown is otherwise unless you want to pay for “fancy” places that are clearly there to cater to the business corwd.
Montreal’s old Chinatown is very sweet but let’s be real, Toronto’s old Chinatown, is larger by orders of magnitude, & is very much still thriving. I’ve had better soup just at the Dragon Mall on Spadina than anywhere in all of Montreal, for basically pocket change. There’s also a relatively new Chinatown in the east near Parliament and Gerrard, Koreatown up on Dupont, etc. The entire city of Markham is basically a Chinatown with amazing food on offer, especially seafood.
Montreal’s Chinatown is great but let’s not pretend it holds a candle to Toronto’s… I mean can you even get Chinese ethnic Vietnamese food here, or Vietnamese ethnic Chinese food, let alone have your pick of restaurants? You can’t even get good dim sum here. Kim Fung is okay but I haven’t had better dim sum here, and I’ve tried lots of places, including places Asian friends insisted I try. Frankly, I’ve had better dim sum in Ottawa.
In any case, in general Toronto has WAY more on offer for ethnic foods of every variety. Talking about Montreal’s Chinatown in relation to other cities is a mistake IMO. By being so condensed ours is a little gem, with its own very particular presence and character.
Ethnic diversity & population density aside, surprisingly our Lebanese food in Montreal is much, much better. You hardly even see pickled turnips in Toronto falafel wraps.
Uatu 20:39 on 2022-02-05 Permalink
There used to be a great dim sum on tashereau Blvd in Brossard but they closed long ago and I don’t know if they relocated. But yeah Toronto dim sum is great. The best places are the ones with the chipped plates and bowls with the plastic table cloths where the bus boy basically grabs the 4 corners and wraps the entire table top into a bag that he throws over his shoulder and carries into the dish pit
JaneyB 10:16 on 2022-02-06 Permalink
@Ian – Agreed. The scale of Chinese and other Asian eats in TO is vast, just vast. I read somewhere that TO has 6 Chinese language daily newspapers. The historic Chinatown there is definitely robust and a significant, indeed expanding business district. Montreal has much more extensive connections with the Maghreb and Middle East though so those cuisines are more available in variety.
DeWolf 10:53 on 2022-02-06 Permalink
Ian, I wasn’t talking about the overall quality or level of Chinese food in Montreal, just in Chinatown specifically. There’s a reason I specified “historic Chinatowns” – the ones that have existed continually in the same location since the 19th century. In Canada, there’s only Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal that have them, and in the US you have Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle and San Francisco. It’s select group of survivors and they all share some common elements that more recent Chinatowns don’t have, like clan associations and temples that have been in place for more than a century, and the physical legacy of exclusion and segregation.
Spadina Chinatown and Chinatown East in Toronto are much more recent. They only emerged in the 1960s after Toronto’s original Chinatown was demolished to make way for City Hall. As such they don’t have quite the same historical roots. They’re different beasts so I don’t think they can be directly compared to the historic Chinatowns.
When it comes to selection and sophistication of Chinese food, obviously Toronto is miles ahead of Montreal. Not surprising given that it has nearly a million people of Chinese origin compared to about 150,000 here. There are very few cities outside Asia that hold a candle to Toronto in terms of the multitude of Chinese cuisines available.
Meezly 12:04 on 2022-02-06 Permalink
As someone whose parents immigrated from Hong Kong, who grew up in Vancouver, and was familiar with the food in historic Chinatown and Richmondland, I understood what DeWolf meant in his first post.
Compared to Van & TO, Mtl has long had a dearth of great Cantonese cuisine. The dim sum at Kim Fung and the classic fare at Noodle Factory are decent, but it’s not the same calibre as even the dankest hole-in the-wall in Vancouver, where you can usually find a cheap decent Chinese takeout joint in a given neighbourhood. In Montreal, the equivalent would be a Thai or Vietnamese place.
There’s long been a big dark hole in my soul not being able to enjoy the dishes I had as a kid. I can only get the rare fix whenever I visit my parents in Vancouver, and the odd visit to TO, but it’s been harder now with the pandemic.
I would say that the range of regional Chinese cuisine in Montreal has improved and diversified due to the influx of mainland Chinese immigrants. The Cantonese speaking population is actually shrinking in Montreal as demographics change. It’s great that new generations are taking over institutions like Dobe & Andy and Mon Nan, but the exciting new places in Mtl’s Chinatown now tend to be cuisines from other regions.
Thankfully, I have folks like Jason Lee to keep track of it all. Here’s a good rundown: https://www.mtl.org/en/experience/where-eat-some-best-chinese-food-montreal
Janet 13:22 on 2022-02-06 Permalink
@DeWolf
Victoria, British Columbia, also has a Chinatown, the oldest in Canada and second-oldest in North America. It is small but still vibrant and the architecture remains distinctive. However, it may not have many good restaurants left. Back in the 70s, something Fung or Fung something (oh my fading memory) was considered the most authentic. We took my boyfriend’s father when was visiting from Montreal but he was physically thrown out by the owner when he insisted on having ketchup.
Meezly 13:53 on 2022-02-06 Permalink
My last comment was made before watching the Global news piece. Now having just watched it, it pretty much outlined what I had said. Should’ve just watched it first!
DeWolf 14:21 on 2022-02-06 Permalink
Thanks Janet, I totally forgot about Victoria but it’s definitely part of the club!