Keeping their traditions alive
Next generation has taken over Anh Dao Restaurant.
The Mainstays is a series highlighting long-standing restaurants and neighbourhood favourites of Toronto. Food reporter Karon Liu offers recommendations for delicious takeout while also sharing stories of how restaurateurs are faring in the pandemic. Craving something in particular? Email kliu@thestar.ca with what you’d like to see him write about in the future.
Scan past the pho, rice and vermicelli dishes on the menu of Anh Dao Restaurant (383 Spadina Ave.) and there’s a section simply called “Our Specialty.”
This is where the rice paper wraps are, or rollings, as the owners like to call them. Two of the more popular options are nem nuong (garlicky pork sausages) and bo la lot banh hoi (beef wrapped in betel leaves). Both come with a garden’s worth of fresh herbs and dried rice paper rounds to wrap everything in.
It’s a fun assembly process: reconstitute the rice paper at home by dipping it in a bowl of hot water to make the wrapper soft enough to envelop whatever combination of meat, herbs and vegetables are desired.
I say combination because it was nearly impossible to cram everything into a single fresh roll. I’d make one with extra peppermint for an extra bright zing, another one with sliced plantains for added crunch and then one with fish mint for an earthier, slightly tangy flavour to contrast the garlic in the nem nuong.
“It’s not cheap ingredients, the herbs we get are $12 to $14 a pound,” co-owner Tony Luu said. “With every type of rolling, you’ll get tia to (perilla leaf), mint, basil, rau ram (Vietnamese coriander), diep ca (fish mint) and chives.”
Tony and his wife, Ashley, have been running the kitchen on their own (with the exception of a weekend helper) since the nearly 40-year-old restaurant reopened in November. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed the restaurant’s original owners, Tony’s father Phu Luu and mother Quoi Ngo, into retirement.
Not wanting the restaurant’s legacy to stop, Tony and Ashley took over operations, continuing to feed the customers who have seen Tony grow up, as well as draw diners whose knowledge of Vietnamese cuisine is limited to pho.
“It’s a family restaurant that has been a staple of Chinatown for so long, and my mom and dad are proud of what they built,” said Tony, who along with Ashley, does everything from buying ingredients at the nearby Chinese grocers in the morning and simmering beef bones for hours to make pho to packing the takeout orders all the while being parents to their eight-month-old daughter, Ariel.
“We want to keep the tradition going. I’ve heard so many stories of businesses that have gone on for so long, but none of the kids wanted to take over.”
Tony’s parents opened Anh Dao in Chinatown in 1983, shortly after arriving in Toronto as part of the mass exodus of people fleeing Vietnam after the war in 1975.
“My dad is from the Vung Tau near the ocean and that’s where the boats were all lined up when they left,” Tony said.
When his parents landed in Canada, they took the route of many newly arrived immigrants and opened a restaurant. It soon became a community hub in Chinatown for other Vietnamese people at the time.
“It was one of the first Vietnamese restaurants on Spadina and we’re known for our specialty wraps, which are our grandma’s recipes,” Tony said. “They got popular really fast. It was a fun place to be.”
Growing up, he and his three brothers spent their afterschool hours there and have worked on and off at the restaurant. But it was 10 years ago that Tony began working full-time at the restaurant, learning the family recipes and the flow of the small kitchen. His thengirlfriend Ashley came to work at the restaurant four years later.
When the pandemic was declared last March, restaurants everywhere scrambled to figure out how to continue operating. But with Tony’s parents in their 60s, they didn’t feel comfortable going back to the restaurant. Ashley was also due to give birth in the spring so returning to work wasn’t an option for her either. The place sat quiet for nine months.
“We waited a few months when our daughter was six months old and asked ourselves if we were going to open or not. We don’t know when COVID would go away and if we stay closed our business would be gone. We can’t close the restaurant for another few months or years,” Ashley said.
Anh Dao reopened in November with Tony and Ashley at the helm. It was always the plan for them to take over the family business, Tony says, but the pandemic sped things up.
“I think they’re getting used to retirement now,” said Tony of his parents. “They were always on the move and gradually they’re enjoying retirement mode. They’re still cooking, but at home, and are getting more comfortable with it.”
Tony and Ashley are part of a small, but noticeable, shift as more Chinatown businesses have set up online ordering and a social media presence in the past year (often thanks to a more tech savvy younger relative or child of the owners, resulting in an online camaraderie among them).
While this is done out of dire circumstances to generate income, the upshot is that these business now have a voice behind the food, helping firsttime customers learn more about the cuisine and decide what to order by scanning the restaurant’s Instagram posts. Each video posted of barbecued meats and food being prepped is a subtle way to show diners the complexities and nuances of Vietnamese cooking, and all the work that goes into it.
“When it comes to Vietnamese cuisine, a lot of people think it needs to be cheap, but I don’t think they know about the time and ingredients we put into everything,” Ashley said.
“The broth is simmering on the stove all day long. The price of everything is going up from meat to vegetables to herbs, salt, sugar, everything. There’s also the takeout containers with every order.”
While the food hasn’t changed and the restaurant is still run by the family that started it all, the couple says one of the goals is to strike a better work-life balance once they make enough money to hire another person to be there more regularly.
“This was the first Christmas we got to spend with our family, ever, unless Christmas landed on a Wednesday because that’s when the restaurant is closed,” Tony said.
“When I was a kid, I barely saw my parents because they worked at the restaurant. That’s something I always think about. It’s tough, but hopefully once we get more capital and things get more normal, we can hire more people to help. That’s all we can hope for.”
“It’s a family restaurant that has been a staple of Chinatown for so long, and my mom and dad are proud of what they built.”
TONY LUU
ANH DAO RESTAURANT CO-OWNER