Founder of Chinatown’s Tap Phong dies at 100
Dat Chuong Tran once ran a store with the same name in Vietnam
Odds are most Torontonians have some connection to Tap Phong Trading, the kitchen supply store that’s been in Chinatown since 1984 and run by three generations of the Tran family. Even if you’ve never shopped there or perused the packed aisles, chances are that you’ve eaten off a plate from there or your favourite restaurant used its pans, baking trays and cutlery. Whenever a local chef asks where they can find a particular piece of kitchen equipment or tool, others will ask, did you check Tap Phong?
Dat Chuong Tran, the founder of the company, died last Thursday, according to a post on the store’s Instagram page. He was 100.
The Chinatown staple has its origins in Vietnam when Dat Chuong and his wife Huong Thi ran a small store with the same name.
“Back in the village a lot of people had small businesses to support their family,” said Dat Chuong’s granddaughter Lili, who can often be seen at the store’s cash registers with her mother.
“Tap Phong in Vietnam was like a convenience store where locals would buy textiles or kitchen supply wares. It was a much smaller iteration than what it is now. My grandparents worked at the store and lived in the room in the back and above with my father and uncle.”
The shop, along with their home, was lost to the Vietnam War.
The Tran family: Dat Chuong, Huong Thi, and their children De, Danny, John and Anna — who was pregnant with Lili at the time — and Lili’s brothers Minh and Tuan who were toddlers themselves, arrived in Canada in 1979 as refugees. Dat Chuong worked as a grocery store manager in Chinatown, while the rest of the family each worked odd jobs and pooled their money together.
“I have very early recollections of going (to his workplace) and he’d give me candy,” Lili recalled.
In 1984, Dat Chuong was offered to take over a ceramics shop (currently the Ajisen Ramen location on Spadina) by its previous owners. After cleaning off boxes of old ceramics in the store’s basement, Tap Phong reopened in Toronto.
The children initially ran the business before Dat Chuong left his steady grocery store job years later to work full-time at the cash registers of Tap Phong. In 1989 the store moved to its current, larger location a few doors north at 360 Spadina Ave.
Lili describes her grandfather as a pragmatic and straightforward person who would tell customers which was the better pan to buy or that a plastic bag would be useless for carrying the wash basin they bought. He also helped others who spoke Teochew (a dialect in Guangdong where Lili’s great grandfather is from) when he served as president of the Chao Chow Association of Ontario that helped newcomers set up their businesses.
The store has been the subject of fascination over the years by local food media for its organized labyrinth of almost every kitchen gadget any home cook can think of — or in some cases, didn’t even know existed.
Sous vide machines, commercial refrigerators, knives of every size and purpose, tajines, moon cake moulds, a novelty bottle shaped like a light bulb for bubble tea — it’s all there. It is a place where professional chefs, culinary students, grandmothers
and people moving out on their own for the first time all browsed the aisles. In the past year, it’s been the go-to spot for takeout containers and insulated delivery bags.
After having a mini stroke in 2010 that left him partially blind, Dat Chuong stepped back from working, but still made the trip from his home in North York to Chinatown a few times a week.
“He would still come to the store for the social factor,” said Lili, adding that he preferred taking public transit, which took more than an hour of switching between the bus, subway and streetcar to get to Chinatown. “He’d come to Chinatown two to three times a week to check on the store and go to his local Chinese bakery and meet up with his friends. Having that routine was very important to him.”
After his wife died in 2018, Dat Chuong’s family did their best to keep his spirits up.
“Sure he had his grandkids, but the daily reminder of not having his wife there, the person who lived the same life as you, that kept you going, it’s really hard,” Lili said. “What sustained him for those three years are the visits from his grandkids and the birth of his great grandkid.”
She remembers all the life lessons he gave her over the years, instilling an ironclad work ethic and the virtue of making the most out of little resources. They used to have a routine where she would give her grandfather a kiss on his cheek at night as a show of respect while he was counting the day’s sales.
“At the end, by the time I was an adult, he started telling us that money doesn’t mean anything. (He’d say) a dollar is all you need for a coffee or a Chinatown bun, but what’s important is your family,” she said. “Respect them, treasure them, love them always.”