Daytime fire destroys restaurant
A fire that started in the middle of lunch hour destroyed a Balgonie restaurant owned by an award-winning chef.
Doug Lapchuk, deputy fire chief with the Balgonie Volunteer Fire Department, said Good Fortune Kitchen was full of customers when the call came in at 11:54 a.m. on Sunday.
Lapchuk said everyone was able to safely evacuate the restaurant, and no one was injured.
The building itself was not as fortunate. Lapchuk said the structure is a total loss.
The fire is not being treated as suspicious.
“We have no reason to suspect it as being anything other than an accidental fire,” Lapchuk said during a phone interview on Monday.
More than 30 volunteer firefighters from Balgonie, White City and Pilot Butte attended the fire.
Good Fortune Kitchen was located at 104 Griffin Road, right beside the Trans-canada Highway.
When crews arrived on scene there was heavy smoke coming from the building. Soon after firefighters arrived, the fire managed to break through the roof.
Lapchuk said it took two to three hours to get the fire under control. Crews didn’t leave the scene until 71/2 hours after they had arrived.
“The wind didn’t do us any favours that’s for sure,” Lapchuk said.
Good Fortune Kitchen was previously located in Stoughton, and was owned by award-winning chef Andrew Mok.
According to a 2012 article in the Leader-post, Mok originally came to Canada in 1976 and owned several restaurants before he returned to China in 2006.
While back in China, he finished eighth place among 300 executive chefs at a culinary competition, and was proclaimed by judges as the “King of Curry.”
He also served as executive chef of the China News Media Centre at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Mok later returned to Canada to open Good Fortune and raise his family.
Mok moved the restaurant from Stoughton to Balgonie in 2019.
Canadians and Indigenous women, in particular, deserve to have the best possible commissioner who will be able to initiate and lead the necessary changes in the RCMP to keep us safer and protect us from violence SEN. LILLIAN DYCK