For a ‘Restaurant Kid,’ a Complex Search for Love and Belonging

[Editor’s note: Rachel Phan grew up the third of three kids in small-town Ontario, where her parents owned a Chinese-Canadian restaurant they named after her, called the May May Inn. ‘Restaurant Kid: A Memoir of Family and Belonging,’ documents Phan’s coming of age — the way her identity is tied to the restaurant her family runs; the way it feels to be the only Chinese-Canadian girl at school; the pros and cons of being able to run wild in adolescence as her parents worked long hours and fought tooth and nail to survive. In the following excerpt, Phan, now at university in another city, brings her white boyfriend home to meet her family for the first time at their new restaurant, China Village.]

When I bring my boyfriend Ethan to my parents’ place for the first time, it’s a big deal.

My brother John texts me non-stop to ask what he likes to eat, what he likes to watch, whether he likes games. My mother echoes his questions about food. “Does he eat shrimp? Does he eat fish? Does he like Chinese food?”

I tell them not to worry. “He’s easy. We’re easy. Don’t stress!” I tell my mum that Ethan loves Chinese food because I’ve seen him inhale a dinner combo at the Oriental Restaurant.

Although I’m telling my mother not to stress and to take it easy, I am very much stressed and not taking it easy. I know this is different from all the times I brought guy friends to the restaurant. The stakes are so much higher because my family is about to meet the guy I fully expect to marry one day. What if they don’t like him? What if he doesn’t like them? What if he can’t understand their accents?

I think about the restaurant then. I think about its cheesy name, China Village, and find I’m still not over the loss of our first restaurant, the May May Inn. I think about the kitchen with its signature Phan chaos. Will Ethan — a clean freak and germaphobe who won’t even let me touch him after I eat — be repulsed when he sees the oily fingerprints on the fridge doors, the scuff marks on the floor, the wayward onion peels that have fallen to the ground and are awaiting the evening sweeping? Will he take one look around the kitchen and shudder?

I ignore the feeling in the pit of my belly when I think about his reaction. How will I feel if he reacts badly? I will take it personally, of course. The restaurant is an extension of my family. It is the life’s work of my parents. The restaurant has made us.

If he rejects the restaurant, is he not also rejecting me and my family?

I push these thoughts aside and repeat to myself that Ethan loves me. He won’t reject me. He won’t reject my family.

I try to rationalize what he might see and say. Yes, the restaurant can get a little dirty — but that’s just normal wear and tear! It’s impossible to keep a deep fryer and its environs completely clean of lard residue.

It’ll be okay. It’ll be great. He’ll love the restaurant. The restaurant made me, so he’ll love it because he loves me.

When we arrive, Ethan is shy but not rude. He smiles widely and is polite. He talks about hockey with my brother and my dad.

“He’s a nice guy,” Mum says before she lowers her voice to a whisper. “Lots of pimples though.” I sigh. I know it’s futile to tell her not to comment on someone’s body.

I try to see the restaurant through his eyes. I see the boxes and bags of unopened snacks that are strewn haphazardly beside the fridge. I see that the waitress is making wontons out front and raining white flour all over the table and the floor, her fingers gunky with the residue of wet flour and egg yolks. I see that some customers are covered in grime, their jeans ripped at the hem and spotted with mysterious brown stains because they came here right after work. A couple is sharing a smoke in front of the restaurant. There’s a group of four rowdy teenagers in the corner eating egg rolls and chugging cans of pop. A woman wearing bright red lipstick leaves marks on her cup of water as she watches her elderly father shakily slurp his wonton soup.

I’m not embarrassed, but I try to imagine how this cast of characters must look to Ethan, who is wide-eyed and taking it all in. I don’t tell him that this is more or less how I grew up — an equally wide-eyed child observing our revolving door of customers. These folks are harmless and help pay our bills. They’re nothing compared to some of the sleepy drunks, awful dine-and-dashers, and nasty, mean-spirited people who have berated us because they had a minor complaint.

Still, I imagine what he’s thinking. Townies. Dirty, smelly small-town folk. In my rational mind, I know he probably isn’t thinking this since he grew up in a small town, too. But I’m suddenly hyper-aware and self-conscious about the restaurant and the people who dine here. It’s like I’m 13 years old again and feeling embarrassed that my parents aren’t fancy lawyers in their clean, fancy offices.

Ethan doesn’t say anything. He just looks and nods and smiles. I’m relieved. I squeeze his hand and kiss his cheek.

But it turns out he’s not easy. He doesn’t eat shrimp. He doesn’t love Chinese food, at least not the dishes my parents make just for us. When Dad makes spareribs that melt off the bone in a savoury sauce with potatoes and carrots, Ethan wrinkles his nose and says it’s “too cow-y.” When Mum makes juicy braised chicken wings with mushrooms in a flavourful soy sauce, he shakes his head. “What about chicken balls? Or soo guy? Can I have that instead?”

This becomes our dance for the entirety of our relationship whenever we visit my family. While we eat the food of our people, he’s eating deep-fried meats. When my parents wrap up their long workday, they have to make two separate dinners: one for us and one for Ethan.

I’m embarrassed that he gives them something else to do after they’ve already worked so hard. I dip my head apologetically and tell my parents I’m sorry for the extra work.

Mum waves me off. “He’s a white guy. White people love deep-fried.” Dad cackles and parrots her. “Yeah, white boy!”

Ethan grits his teeth and whispers in my ear. “And you think my dad’s bad?”

I think about his dad, and what he’s implying, and my insides start to simmer.

Ethan’s dad is a character. When allowing me into their home, he somehow manages to be simultaneously welcoming and hatefully offensive. He hates Catholics. He makes disparaging comments about Black people, Muslims, Asians. He wonders why Black people are always dancing or eating fried chicken or bothering to get tattoos. He questions the hygiene of Muslims. He calls Chinese people “panfaces” because we apparently have flat faces. He tells me that White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, or WASPs, are the most superior people on the planet.

The apple has not fallen far from the tree.

His son tells me things like:

“When we have kids, I wouldn’t feel comfortable with them eating the food that your parents make.”

“My dad will definitely tease our kids about being half-Chinese.”

“White privilege doesn’t exist. How can it exist when affirmative action is a thing?”

“Being called a ‘cracker’ is just as offensive as any other racial slur.”

I don’t know how to explain to him that my parents calling him a “white boy” and saying he loves deep-fried foods when he does is not “just as bad” as these statements. I don’t yet have the vocabulary to describe how these sentiments make me feel bad, less-than, unseen. I don’t know if anything I can say will make him hear me. For a time, I stop saying anything at all. What’s the point?

I turn to him and smile, placating. In private, I tell my parents to stop teasing him.

The only year I don’t work New Year’s Eve

The holidays are the busiest time of year for our restaurant, with New Year’s Eve being the most chaotic and stress-inducing day.

As kids, we know we can never miss it.

It’s a tense time in the kitchen. Someone is usually yelling, another person is giving someone else the cold shoulder, and we’re each busy with our specific tasks. John’s on the deep fryer and soup station, Mum’s making fried rice and running around doing one-off tasks, my older sister Linh is packing takeout orders with Dad, who’s busy with the wok and all the stir-fries.

Waitresses are yelling, “Can we squeeze another order in?” Phones are ringing. And someone, somewhere, is complaining about not getting the extra sweet and sour sauce they asked for. I’m washing dishes, making wontons and chopping vegetables with my headphones in to drown out all the yelling.

It’s functional dysfunction in that kitchen, and as much as I hate having to be there every Dec. 31, I don’t dare refuse to go. Not helping out at the restaurant would feel like betraying my family and my duties.

The three of us kids long to be like “normal people,” who go to parties and see the ending of the year as a time for celebration instead of yet another trial to endure. But the restaurant comes first. Helping Mum and Dad comes first.

Except there’s a year when Ethan asks me not to help out at the restaurant. “My buddy’s having a party. Please come,” he asks, fixing his green eyes on me and looking so earnest. I nod.

“That should be okay. I’m the most disposable person in the kitchen anyway,” I say.

When I tell my family, I can feel the resentment radiating off my brother. “Wow, I can’t believe Rachel is skipping New Year’s,” he says. It’s like our childhood all over again, when they’re chained to the restaurant on the weekends, working hard, while I get to float around, hang out with friends, shirk my responsibilities.

I feel terrible. I come up with a compromise where I’ll help out for an hour and then catch a train in the middle of dinner service so I can be with Ethan before midnight.

When I leave, it’s the busiest time of the night. I wave and say bye, but everyone’s so focused, I’m not sure they can even hear me over the din of the kitchen. I’m full of guilt and self-loathing. I feel like I’m failing my family. I feel like the worst daughter.

I go to my first New Year’s Eve party that night and find it boring. Overrated. I am shocked to find myself filled with FOMO for the restaurant and wondering what my family is doing. Are they cleaning up? Tallying the bills and determining it a successful New Year’s Eve? How much did they make? Are they showering the day’s oil and grime off their bodies and feeling proud of a job well done? Are they watching the ball drop or have they already fallen asleep after such a gruelling day of work? Are they all together and missing me?

I’m drinking at an underwhelming party somewhere in the suburbs with my boyfriend and his friends and longing for the chaos of the holiday at the restaurant. I feel useless, like I have no purpose. I look at who I’m with. Everyone is white. Girls wearing Uggs are rapping to Jay-Z and dropping the n-word like it doesn’t carry any meaningful weight. I hate it here.

It’s the first and only time I skip New Year’s Eve at the restaurant.

---

Excerpted from ‘Restaurant Kid: A Memoir of Family and Belonging,’ by Rachel Phan. Copyright © 2025 Rachel Phan. Published by Douglas & McIntyre Ltd. Reproduced by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.

Our comment threads will be closed until April 22 to give our moderators a much-deserved break. Enjoy the long weekend!