For many Calgarians, ginger beef is a quintessential dish from their beloved city. In fact, he is adored throughout Alberta.
The dish is a plate of battered and fried beef strips, often stir-fried with ginger, peppers and onions. It’s then topped with a sticky, spicy sauce and served over a bed of plain or fried rice.
A plate of ginger beef. Jonathan Wong/South China Morning Post via Getty Images
It has become a staple in Chinese restaurants and eateries across Canada. Look at any Chinese food stand in a Canadian mall and you’re likely to see ginger beef on a serving tray.
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But the humble dish also represents a collective struggle for survival in a foreign land.
Silver Inn Restaurant, a family-run Chinese restaurant in Calgary, supposedly invented ginger beef as a way to introduce new Chinese foods to Western tastes.
Silver Inn restaurant owner Kwong Cheung stands outside on Tuesday, October 11, 2022. Global News
It was first opened in 1975 by two sisters from Hong Kong, Louise Tang and Lily Wong, who renovated an old coffee shop just outside of Calgary’s Chinatown.
According to its website, Silver Inn’s original menu includes some Western and Beijing-style Chinese dishes to cater mostly to non-Chinese diners who are not used to authentic dishes.
After 47 years in business, the restaurant finally closed its doors on Sunday. The business was so iconic that its sign was stolen the next day (it has since been returned to the owner).
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“Like any dish, it was made by mistake,” said owner Kwong Cheung.
“My oldest brother was a trained chef, and when we first decided to open the restaurant, he noticed that Canadians like to eat French fries. Of course, like Alberta, people loved to eat beef.
“We were trying to find a way to mix the two together… We realized we could take the beef and make it crispy like fries, then pair it with a sweet and sour sauce, kind of like ketchup.
“We wanted to adapt to the local palate.”
1:55 A sign stolen from an iconic Calgary restaurant has been returned
Cheung said his family never noticed how popular ginger beef had become until years later because they struggled to make the business a success.
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“When we first opened the restaurant in 1975, we were the first to serve (Beijing-style) food. We were thinking about how to survive the first six months. We never thought of leaving a legacy or anything like that,” said the restaurant owner.
“When something developed, we were so busy that we thought about nothing but keeping the customers happy… We had to – we could have retired even earlier!”
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Ginger beef is one of many dishes created as a result of Chinese-Canadian immigration. Chop suey and mu shu pork are two examples of dishes created by Chinese immigrants.
But these dishes often have a painful history. In the 1850s, many Chinese laborers faced language barriers when they arrived in Canada, forcing them to either work on the Canadian Pacific Railway for poor wages or open businesses.
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These Chinese restaurant owners often had to change dishes or entire menus to suit the majority of Western tastes and create a successful business.
“In the 1800s, they were often the only Chinese in these towns. Their customers are usually of European descent and they ate at these restaurants because they came to Canada without their families,” said Josephine Smart, a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Calgary.
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“If you look up old menus, you’ll notice that Chinese-run cafes sometimes don’t include a single Chinese item, and if they did, it would be a very limited selection.”
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These restaurants also served as community centers for Chinese immigrants who often came to North America without their families due to the racist immigration policies of the time.
“They will also cater to Chinese immigrants who work in the same location but will be ordering from very different menus. Sometimes it’s just a verbal menu: what the owner has available today,” Smart said.
Smart said legacy restaurants like the Silver Inn and Golden Inn are woven into Canadian culture because they’ve been around for so long.
The Golden Inn was a restaurant known for its salt and pepper calamari located in Calgary’s Chinatown. The restaurant closed its doors in August after 45 years in business.
“You have Chinese people who grew up in Canada and non-Chinese Canadians eating these types of food and being exposed to Chinese Canadian culture. It is part of the Canadian cultural fabric.
“In general, when you look at the history of Canada, Chinese immigrants play an important role. They are best known for working on the Canadian Pacific Railway and as domestic workers for wealthy farmers and ranchers… The Chinese have made economic and historical contributions to innovation.”
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1:46 A mural in Calgary’s Chinatown spans the ages
The Evolution of Contemporary Chinese-Canadian Cuisine
Smart disagreed with the idea that the closing of the old Chinese restaurants meant the decline of Chinatown. Rather, it is an opportunity to introduce new Chinese cultural elements to cities like Calgary and Vancouver.
“A lot of these restaurant owners don’t want their kids working in very demanding industries. They worked very hard to get the income and upward mobility that others could not. Children often have Canadian educations and higher degrees than their parents,” Smart said.
“Cultural heritage cannot be locked in place. You can’t freeze it because it’s a living thing. You can’t defend some preconceived notion that cultures are frozen in time.
“The demands of the market are also changing… Their passing should not be considered a tragedy, but part of the natural economic cycle in the service sector.”
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Chinese-Canadian cuisine is also evolving. Many chefs are pushing the boundaries of traditional dishes, paving the way for “new Asian” cuisine and restaurants. New Asian cuisine is a general term for dishes that integrate traditional flavors with modern cooking and arrangement techniques.
Nick Liu, chef and owner of Toronto’s Dai Lo, believes the new Asian cuisine is creating more opportunities for Asian chefs to express their heritage and creativity. Dai Lo, which means big brother in Cantonese, is a Chinese restaurant that follows French cooking techniques.
Nick Liu is the chef and owner of Dai Lo, a Chinese restaurant in Toronto. Contributed by Nick Liu
Liu was inspired by his Hakka Chinese heritage and wanted to find a way to combine his French training with the food he ate growing up.
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While he acknowledges that Cantonese-style dishes like ginger beef are influential in Chinese Canadian cuisine, Liu said he’s never been comfortable cooking those dishes.
“The inspiration was always putting my family and culture first. I was trained in French and I wanted to try to find a way to take the food I was raised with and find a symbiotic relationship with the places I worked,” Liu told 770 CHQR.
“I wanted to incorporate them into a style of cooking and a style of restaurant that I could be proud of…I’ve been cooking for a long time, and if I feel something about this food, subconsciously the diners will feel something about it as well.
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Liu also said that the new Asian cuisine has given him the opportunity to learn more about his culture and heritage. Like many first-generation Asian immigrants, his ethnicity was often an internal and societal struggle.
“There were times when I hated being Chinese. I actually avoided being Chinese. It’s the racism of my own people, but also the experience of trying to fit in with white kids and Canadian kids… You become a product of your environment,” the executive chef said.
“It took me a long time to become Asian again. I…
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