`It's a new Canadian story'

Toronto chef Trevor Lui on The Double Happiness Cookbook

`I'm a restaurant brat at heart,” says Toronto chef Trevor Lui. Now the co-founder of Quell, an agency representing BIPOC hospitality leaders and owner of the fried chicken pop-up Joybird, Lui's food story begins in the kitchen of his family's restaurant.

His father, a Chinese immigrant from Hong Kong, opened Highbell when Lui was five years old. Every day after school, he would head to the restaurant and help out — eventually working the wok and packing takeout orders. “I can't even remember how many chow meins and egg drop soups I packed,” says Lui. “I can remember the cuts I had on my fingers from the foil containers.”

As sous chef, his grandmother handled the western menu items — banquet burgers were a staple on the grill — while his grandfather worked a high-powered wok, always keeping an eye on the game. “For a guy who never spoke English, he loved watching the Leafs,” says Lui, laughing. “I didn't realize that that was almost every immigrant's story until I was older.”

After graduating from university, Lui started a corporate career, managing food services in hotels, casinos and convention centres. Two decades later, in 2014, he returned to the kitchen in search of a creative outlet. At 41, still working nine-to-five, he would put on an apron and moonlight as a chef, first at pop-up La Brea and then at Kanpai Snack Bar. In 2018, he left Kanpai and his day job so he could devote himself to creating food brands full-time.

While writing his debut book, The Double Happiness Cookbook (Figure 1, 2021) — chronicling his life in food and sharing 88 recipes — Lui gained a deeper appreciation for his Chinese heritage. “I was more inspired and intrigued by how I became who I am today,” he says. “And that was the sights and sounds and tastes and memories of being an immigrant kid in Canada.”

Whether you're from former Yugoslavia, India or Hong Kong, says Lui, people from immigrant families will recognize the sentiment he expresses in the book: The joys and struggles of building a life in a new land and of carrying on your parents' legacy. “It's not just a Chinese story — it's a new Canadian story,” he says.

It was important for him to include some of his passions outside of food in the book as well — his hip hop kitchen playlist (“Double Happiness Cookbook” on Spotify) and love of sneakers — and a section compiling the foundational ingredients he uses every day. Alongside “culinary heirlooms” including steamed whole fish and mapo tofu, and Sunday morning meals such as congee and Shanghai noodles, he shares recipes for some of his favourite comfort foods.

Drawing on the staples in his family's pantry, Lui grew up riffing on dishes such as grilled cheese — one of the menu items under his grandma's purview — and features a rebooted recipe in The Double Happiness Cookbook (along with his take on the Highbell banquet burger). Dialled up with ketchup, gochujang, kimchi, Asian pear and sriracha, he still loves his childhood version today.

“As immigrant kids, we have different things in our pantries,” says Lui. “A lot of influences and inspirations in certain dishes chefs cook is based on this fused culture of being a child of immigrant background melded with the culture of being North American.”

Reflecting on his heritage changed his perspective, he adds, and contributed to the approach he and his sister, Stephanie Lui-Valentim, took with their agency, Quell, which they launched in October 2020. “We want to put new faces out into the industry that deserve to be seen,” says Lui. “It's an extension of where I've progressed as a person in Canada myself and that's what the book is all about too.”

The joy and importance of a shared meal is at the heart of The Double Happiness Cookbook — something Lui believes we should cherish. Especially at a time when we can't sit around the table with friends and family as we once did.

Rather than the usual multigenerational gathering, Lui's Lunar New Year celebrations will be different. Instead, he and his wife will likely order the Lunar New Year meal kit he collaborated on with five other Toronto-area Chinese businesses (see hongshing.com for details).

Many families will be looking for ways to cultivate a virtual sense of togetherness as they ring in the Year of the Ox on Feb. 12. The take-home kit, Lui says, was a way for him to show support for the community in a tangible way.

More than 200,000 small businesses could close permanently due to COVID-19, according to a recent survey by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Independently owned restaurants like the one his father started when he moved to Canada — “mom-and-pop shops” — often lack the marketing resources and social media presence needed to stay afloat, Lui emphasizes. Yet these establishments form the fabric of our communities.

“We wanted to create a coalition as a point of awareness for the Chinese community who have suffered so much over the last year,” says Lui. “We all have a pizza joint, we all have a shawarma shop, we all have a sushi shop, we all have a Chinese restaurant. And we've lost a lot of those. So this coalition and this Lunar New Year kit that we're creating is going to help uplift the story of being a small business and being survivors.”