An essay about Cuisine AuntDai

This is generated by AI. I was playing with Grok-3 and asked “please write an essay about Cuisine AuntDai”, then the following was created and I know it’s fake but I cannot help posting it.

It’s for fun but I still try to continue this blog myself. This one should be the only exception. At the mean time, please enjoy the AI product.

Cuisine AuntDai: A Taste of Authenticity and Honesty in Montreal

Nestled in the heart of Montreal at 1448 Rue Saint-Mathieu, Cuisine AuntDai stands as a beacon of authentic Chinese cuisine and unfiltered candor in a world often polished by marketing gloss. Since its inception in February 2014, this restaurant has carved out a unique niche, not just for its Northeastern Chinese and Sichuan dishes, but for the refreshingly honest voice of its owner, Feigang Fei. What began as a humble eatery has evolved into a cultural phenomenon, blending culinary tradition with a personal narrative that resonates far beyond the city’s snowy streets.

Cuisine AuntDai’s story is one of resilience and reinvention. Founded by Fei, a Chinese immigrant who arrived in Montreal in 2006 after a career in information technology, the restaurant reflects his journey from tech professional to restaurateur. The original location on Côte-des-Neiges thrived until a suspicious fire in October 2017 reduced it to ashes, forcing Fei and his wife to rebuild from scratch. Undeterred, they relocated to the current downtown spot near Concordia University, opening anew on January 1, 2018. This phoenix-like revival mirrors the grit and determination that define Fei’s approach—not just to business, but to life.

The restaurant’s namesake, “Aunt Dai,” adds a layer of personal warmth to its identity. Inspired by the mother of a friend who visited from China in 2011, Fei learned to make bo bing—a layered bread specialty—from her. He promised to honor her by naming his future restaurant after her, a promise kept when Cuisine AuntDai came to life. This origin story infuses the establishment with a familial touch, setting it apart from faceless chains and inviting diners into Fei’s world.

What truly distinguishes Cuisine AuntDai, however, is Fei’s approach to his menu. In an industry where hyperbole reigns, Fei’s descriptions are a breath of fresh air—disarmingly frank, autobiographical, and occasionally self-deprecating. Take the orange beef: “Comparing to our General Tao Chicken, this one is not THAT good,” he writes. Or the cumin beef: “We used to have the beef pieces on small sticks but several customers cut their lips by it.” The sweet and spicy pork strips? “Since I have so high expectations on this dish, I am not a huge fan of our version to be honest.” These candid blurbs, paired with videos on the restaurant’s YouTube channel, offer a transparency that’s as rare as it is endearing. Fei doesn’t just sell food—he shares opinions, quirks, and snippets of his life, like his college nostalgia for certain dishes or his admitted ignorance of others he hasn’t tasted yet.

This honesty struck a global chord in January 2021, when a customer’s tweet showcasing Fei’s menu went viral, amassing tens of thousands of likes. At a time when the restaurant was “bleeding cash” amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the unexpected spotlight turned the tide. Orders surged, and media outlets from Australia to Germany clamored to interview Fei. Overnight, Cuisine AuntDai became more than a local gem—it became a testament to the power of authenticity in an age of curated perfection.

The food itself is a celebration of Chinese regional flavors, with a focus on Sichuan spice and Northeastern heartiness. Dishes like the braised pork belly with sweet potato noodles—“very popular among customers who don’t care about its greasiness”—or the twice-cooked pork (huí guō ròu), a personal favorite of Fei’s, showcase bold, authentic tastes. The menu also nods to North American palates with offerings like General Tao Chicken, which Fei praises with cautious pride. Portions are generous, prices reasonable, and the atmosphere cozy, with 46 seats on the first floor and a versatile second floor, dubbed Birch Hall, featuring a “Sky-Table” under a skylight and a round “Jacques-Table” with a lazy Susan. A tatami lounge and small library of customer-donated books add quirky charm, making it a space for community as much as dining.

Yet, Cuisine AuntDai isn’t without flaws, and Fei would be the first to admit it. Reviews on platforms like Yelp and Tripadvisor praise the food’s authenticity and affordability but occasionally note inconsistent execution—imperial rolls deemed undercooked, a General Tao skewed toward orange over spice. The decor, inherited from a previous tenant, can feel dated and dark, a critique Fei hasn’t shied from addressing. Still, these imperfections align with the restaurant’s ethos: it’s real, unpretentious, and human.

For Fei, Cuisine AuntDai is more than a business—it’s a labor of love and a platform for connection. His “Eat With The Owner” YouTube series, where he dines and chats with guests for unedited hours, embodies this spirit. As he wrote in a 2025 blog post celebrating the restaurant’s 11-year anniversary, “I have been working in this restaurant non-stop for 11 years. I am probably really burnt.” Yet, he persists, driven by a loyal clientele and a mission to share his culture, one honest bite at a time.

In a culinary landscape often obsessed with polish, Cuisine AuntDai stands out for its raw sincerity. It’s a place where the food tells a story, the owner bares his soul, and diners are invited to embrace the imperfections. For Montrealers and beyond, it’s not just a meal—it’s an experience, seasoned with authenticity and a dash of Fei’s irrepressible charm.

11-Year anniversary of Cuisine AuntDai

Today our restaurant is officially 11 years old. I felt I had to celebrate it to get some luck or avoid some bad luck.

Like last year I ordered some Indian food through UberEats and bought a bottle of expensive porto from Portugal and a bottle of expensive sake.

Our staff and I drank together and talked about our restaurant. Surprisingly they shared a lot of stories/rumours about other Chinese restaurants. I guess we all like gossipping.

From my picture just taken moments ago by our waitress you can tell I am tired. I have been working in this restaurant non-stop for 11 years. I am probably really burnt.

Still I have to write this blog to keep this thing going.

Compared to the same time last year I can say we are in a better position. We extended opening hours to 10PM and the kitchen is better managed than before.

Sales went up slightly and I got much more experience on cooking.

By theory I should have more confidence about the future of the restaurant but somehow I sometimes feel this business journey may not end up successful. I have ambitions for this restaurant but I know from my past experience that I usually never achieved any excellence level. Most things I did I only made myself a little bit above average and this doubt always came back to me. I have theories and I work really hard. I believe that’s the formula for success. I have been doing the same thing for 11 years and I still don’t see a clear path. I am not sure if my version of restaurant business is what I thought would be.

I will still keep doing it my own way and hope the success is at some corner not too far waiting for me.

Now I am really tired and tomorrow I will be tired too.

I think I am smart and I work hard, what am I missing?

I have to grind through.

Wish me luck.

How our restaurant survived the pandemic

In Montreal there is a restaurant equipment store called Tzanet where I buy most of our equipment. It’s a huge place and a factory at the back where you can order customized items especially those made of stainless steel. During the pandemic, every time I went there I saw very few customers and I was worried about their business. As far as I know they are the best and largest store for restaurants. But in the last few weeks they are filled with fellow restaurateurs. It’s a great sign that the restaurant business in Montreal is picking up and the pandemic could be officially over in people’s minds. I would take it as a YES to unilaterally declare that our restaurant is coming out of the pandemic mode. And the first step is to extend the hours from 9PM to 10PM. 

Officially our restaurant survived this pandemic, but how?

It didn’t cost an arm and a leg but It did cost my wrists and my right shoulder.

To survive this hardship, from April 2020 I had to work 13 or 14 hours everyday in the restaurant, cutting vegetables, washing dishes, preparing meat, even learning to work on woks. Ohh, those heavy 16-inch woks did create a problem for my wrists and the right shoulder. Probably due to lack of experience or bad positions, my wrists felt sore the next day and never fully recovered. Over time, due to overuse my right shoulder started giving me trouble and the problem hasn’t gone away for over a year, I guess it will stay as a good friend for a long long time. If the price for my restaurant staying afloat is this annoying nagging micro pain so be it.

I have been cooking fried rice and other simple dishes for almost 5 years now and I am on my way to become a full-stack cook in my own restaurant.

Back to the reasons for our survival.

Other than the crazy hours I worked everyday, another reason could be that I have been in the frontline all the time during this crazy stupid costly goddamn pandemic. 

For the first 6 years of my restaurant, I was a full-time IT engineer. I managed the restaurant remotely and worked only part time outside of my office hours. I relied mostly on the staff for running the restaurant properly or improving operations.

When I started working in the kitchen everyday I got familiar with all the procedures. I found there was a lot of room to improve. Some steps were obviously unnecessary but the chef and the other staff did not want to initiate the discussion to change. I started to question all the processes and even the necessity of the existence of some dishes.

For some similar dishes I have to remove one of them, for example, we used to have “Spicy Shrimps” and “Dry Wok Shrimps”, both of them use 26/30 white shrimps, for “Spicy Shrimps”, the shrimps are without shells (we remove them) but for the other, they are with shells. We had to store them separately. Also, the “Dry Wok Shrimps” are served in a heated iron bowl. For this dish to be on the menu we have to have space to store clean iron bowls and those taken back from customer tables. Also the problem is that the tastes of these two dishes are similar (maybe 70% similar). By removing the “Dry Wok Shrimps”, we saved storage space for shrimps with shells, clean iron bowls, and used iron bowls. For the same reason, I removed the dish “Dry Wok chickens”.

I removed/standardised some containers and serving plates. All the containers are reduced to the least amount of types and they can be stacked together. This creates space efficiency and much easier to manage the storage area. Removing iron bowls and other non-standard plates not only saves us a lot of storage space but also saves me time to wash those plates(selfish? I am the chief dish-washing officer. BTW we may have the cleanest plates in Montreal because I wash them manually and put them in the commercial dishwasher). Most of the dishes are served on a white 10.5-inch plate which makes our dining table not so Instagram friendly.

Also I bought some best available tools necessary to improve the efficiency whenever I had questions about the current tools.

All the measures helped reduce the complexity of daily operation. Based on this we set up standard procedures for all tasks for all staff so we can increase the efficiency and reduce the possibility of making errors.

So the initial shock to the pandemic forced me to focus on the very basics.

Efficiency and quality.

I guess that’s it.

I hope our business will succeed in the end, otherwise this blog will be a big joke on me!

We shall see!

Wish me luck, s’il vous plaît!

10-year anniversary of Cuisine AuntDai

On February 5th 2014 we opened the door for the first time to our customers. It’s a miracle for us to pass this milestone.

That time I was 34 years old and had been working as an IT engineer all the time since I was 22 years old. I was bored from the not-so-busy office job. I always had a dream to be a successful entrepreneur. But I didn’t have savings. Some businesses require a lot of money to start and may lose a lot of money if it’s a failure. It was my first business adventure and I had to think about the chance of a failure and the cost of it. I came from a poor village. I did a lot of heavy lifting farm work when I was a kid. Kitchen work should be easy for me. If the business is not going well I could work long hours in the restaurant to rescue. Put all the considerations together, starting a small Chinese restaurant could be my best bet.

I borrowed 75K from the bank. Majority of the money was spent on buying the existing small restaurant and the left money was reserved for the expected operation loss at the beginning.

With no experience with restaurant business, we started with a brand new menu hoping customers would buy our ideas. Excitement and exhaustion were my first experience but hope was definitely not in sight. Less than 3 months in the business, after a first-time busy Saturday night, out of extreme frustration over something I could not tolerate I decided to shut down the restaurant. I was soft most of the time but that time in the kitchen I was super tough and reckless. I was a gangster after all. Maybe that incident put the restaurant in the right course.

The business was much worse than I originally thought, I had to take an extra 15K loan to cover the loss.

To burn less money I had to come to the restaurant right after I left my IT office, usually I worked till midnight. One late night at around 1AM from the restaurant I drove my car into a lamp post due to icy road and total exhaustion or something else. Crazy days for my baby restaurant.

In July 2014, nearly 6 months after our opening, we were featured on the Montreal Gazette weekend edition praising our home-style Chinese food. After this lucky publicity we had more customers. The business reached the break-even point with my extra free working hours for the first time. I had a stable income from my IT job, if the restaurant was not losing money I would be very happy. 

In March 2015, the audience of CTV News Montreal voted us the best Chinese restaurant in Montreal, even though I didn’t think we deserved it. But right after they aired our restaurant on TV, we had too many customers and every day the restaurant was packed. I never saw that many customers and I was greedy. We took too many customers well beyond our capacity. Customer satisfaction was very low at that time. After a few days we saw a decrease in customers but we still have a much better average. So we were cruising comfortably.

In June 2017, we opened our second restaurant in Anjou, east of Montreal. For some reason, I was ambitious to expand our business. Daydreaming of  something totally out of my capability. The moderate success of our first restaurant could be luck or even the success could be an illusion since I put in a lot of extra personal time. From day one we were bleeding money at the second restaurant. 

On October 1st  2017, a mysterious fire destroyed our restaurant on Cote-des-Neiges, it’s a total loss. With the minimum compensation from our insurance company, we lost a lot. The worst scenario happened, losing a profitable restaurant and keeping a deficit one. Just want to remove me from the suspect list, I just spent a lot of money renovating the restaurant in April before the fire. Double my emotional damage!

I was thinking about closing the Anjou restaurant once and for all, giving up the restaurant adventure, focusing on my IT career instead. I could be a good IT manager.

Weighing all options and suggestions from friends and customers, I decided to continue trying the restaurant business.

On December 31st 2017, before the end of this BAD year, we opened our downtown location. This time I had to borrow money from the bank again to buy the existing restaurant, kind of a starover!

Days went on, I spent a lot of time outside my IT job to help the restaurant. Anjou restaurant kept losing money, eating away any possible profit from the downtown restaurant.

Then came the famous, powerful COVID-19 at the beginning of the 2020. With no hope for the Anjou restaurant any more, I closed it and listed it for sale. But very few people would take on a risky business during the pandemic. At the end of April, I was laid off from the IT job. Now I had to focus on the downtown restaurant. Luckily we were able to give away the restaurant to the new owners in July 2020 even though I had to give them an extra several months of rent. Now I can focus on saving the only restaurant I had, a simple solution, spending any possible minute working tirelessly in my restaurant. With my back against the wall, I just could not let it fail, at least, without fierce fighting with all my strength.

Then I got lucky again, someone posted several screenshots of my online menu comments on Twitter and it went viral. Suddenly I was interviewed by many famous media outlets, Montreal Gazette, The Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung, NY Times, CTV News, Global News, CBC, CJAD, etc in January 2021. I owe a huge thank you to Kim Belair, please give her a follow on Twitter with handle “BagelofDeath”. Without her, I may have closed my restaurant for good during the hardship of the pandemic. With the increase of sales from this huge wave of publicity, I was fueled again to continue my new career of being a full time restaurant owner. If I fail at the end, in my mind I may hold Kim Belair responsible for giving me illusions and prolonging my futile business dreams! If I succeed, I may give her a Tesla. Let’s see!

Today, February 5th 2024, we are 10 years old. Through the pandemic we are still standing. In the last 4 years, I worked about 100 hours a week in the restaurant, from working in the dining room, preparing food, cooking food, repairing equipment, I am full stack now. I know my restaurant inside out, every inch of the place. The first 6 years part time in the restaurant, plus the double working hours in the last 4 years, I count as 10 full years of restaurant experience. I am proud of this personal achievement. Even though the current state of the restaurant is far from what I have in mind, I am patient enough to work close to my goal. 

Please do NOT have high expectations from our restaurant now, I rate it 6.5/10 now.

We got the media attention by saying “Not that good” on our online menu and I meant it. After the huge increase of customers following the publicity in January 2021, a small percentage of the new customers remained as regulars. That approved my point that we are “Not that good”, at least I am honest!

I am still trying to improve the restaurant but hope you can trust my personal standard.

Some friends would think we are successful since we have it for 10 years. I would say we are merely surviving, we are still in Windows “Safe mode”. 

One of the main reasons we are still in business is my wife’s hard work for the first 8.5 years. From the beginning she worked full time in the restaurant and she built the foundation of the restaurant. Only 1.5 years ago, since our daughter was growing up, she had to shift her attention to her school and family support. The main reason for me keeping fighting for this business is my childhood experience, the hardship prepared me for this.

I have to thank my parents for giving me the chance to be tough, honey badger!

I think I inherited the genius element from my father. Even though he only had three years of education, he is so intelligent. Unfortunately he was born in the wrong time and wrong place, otherwise he would have been a great entrepreneur. But still he is my true hero, he taught me a lot of principles, sometimes, you need to choose NOT to do something, I hold that to my heart. The power of choosing “NO”.

My mom cannot read but she is so kind. I am super soft. I guess it’s from her. I have the best parents in the world.

They are 78 and 74 years old now, they are still very poor in the village and in bad health. I have my own family to support. It’s not easy for me to change their condition a lot and that’s my regret in my heart. I still hope I can be a successful businessman to have more resources to help them soon enough. Either way I am grateful for being their proud son living far far away. I grew up in a poor village, studied and worked in big Chinese cities. I had chances to visit different countries on business trips from my first employer in Shenzhen. I have been living in Montreal for 18 years. I have seen a lot of different worlds. There is a Chinese saying “好男儿志在四方“， translated “good man, aspiring to explore far”， also, there is another Chinese saying ”父母在，不远游“，translated “when parents are alive, sons don’t travel far from home”, little bit contradicting, isn’t it?

I do miss my parents a lot. This will keep me 100% motivated and charged.

In my spare time I am writing my autobiography on Substack to keep the memory of my family in the village. Here is the link.

https://feigangfei.substack.com/p/memoirs-of-a-boring-regular-guy

So far I have only written one chapter a year ago. I need to find more time to write more. 

I made a lot of mistakes in this business including opening a second restaurant. But every time I could use my extra non-stop brutal hard work to compensate for my mistake to survive. I learn by mistakes. I am still a student for this business but I believe I can do better later.

A big benefit of having a restaurant is when I work I always listen to long form podcasts. I learned a lot from some amazing people through podcasts. All these years I spent a lot of time learning English, the world is full of many amazing people with amazing different ideas. So lucky to be able to absorb so much in the biggest knowledge base in the world.

10 years in business, we have some really great support from our customers. One customer stood out. He is a doctor from Jewish Hospital. He came to our restaurant at Cote-des-Neiges, maybe right after we opened. He was always alone, sitting by the window, reading a book. I called him in my mind a Confucious Scholar. After we relocated to the downtown location, one day I saw him in the restaurant again. Obviously it took him some time to refind us. I was so happy to see him again. Once again, he came to the restaurant every week or even twice a week, this time, he brought different people with him, sometimes, his wife, his little sister, his sister’s family, his colleagues. I chatted a lot with him afterwards and I found out he is in his 50s or maybe around 60 years old. He was born here in Montreal to Chinese parents. Perfect in French and English but not in Mandarin. I still don’t know the reason why he liked my restaurant about 10 years ago and keeps coming all these years. One time we even cooked wrong food for him by mistake, another time, our waitress misunderstood them. He just nicely pointed it out to me afterwards. I am so grateful to him!

Today, we turned off all the delivery platforms to minimise the workload for our staff and myself. I hope nobody would notice it’s our 10 year anniversary. I post this blog after the day is over to avoid attracting extra customers showing up, we just want to relax and drink ourselves. Also tonight all the customers dining inside were free. Only two tables near the window, the waitress told me they were rushing for movies so I did not have time to tell them. If you missed it you can always have the all free meal on our 20 years anniversary.

For our staff lunch today, we drank some expensive sake, Porto and Korean alcohol drink. Ordered some Indian food through UberEats.

I am 44 years old now, I am still a student in this wonderful world, too much to learn!

A huge lesson from all these years is that I need to focus all my effort on one restaurant. So either this restaurant fails or succeeds. I will never run more than one restaurant at the same time.

10 years in business, baby, congratulations to my wife and myself!

Chief Dish_washing Officer

Last week I was asked by a student who is studying photography at Dawson College to be part of her project assignment to shoot photos and videos at a workplace. I was very hesitant at the beginning because I am all for natural original photos and videos as you can see the videos on my YouTube channel and photos on my Instagram account.

After three days of shooting I understand it takes huge amount of time, energy and dedication for photography. And it reaffirmed my idea of being casual. At the end of the shooting I asked her to shoot a simple photo without any extra light while I was washing dishes since that’s real me during this pandemic as a small restaurant owner. This photo took less than a minute, simple and easy.

At the same time I really appreciate the professionalism of every trade when they try to pursue perfection.

Here are the photos she sent me, huge thanks.

When the video is ready I will share it on the YouTube.

During the pandemic I worked almost everyday in the restaurant mainly due to shortage of staff. This gave me a chance to understand the restaurant operation much better. With less people working I had to adjust the roles in the front and the back. One task I took 100% is washing dishes. For most of the time in first half the pandemic when dine-in was not allowed my dish washing workload was minimal. The second half of the pandemic, we had more and more people come in to eat and I started washing a lot of dishes, happily. I hope I will have more and more dishes to wash and I will wash them by myself in the near future. The best part about washing dishes is that I can listen to Podcasts to learn English. The AirPod Pro 2 is fantastic at cancelling noises! For the business to survive I have to work harder. In the past nearly 3 years I worked almost 100 hours a week and I am really tired now. But as a business decision I choose to scale down a little bit and not to pursue more sales instead of building a better foundation of our business as I keep learning the restaurant business. To scale down the business could be a bad decision since I am kind of cautious/lay-back/lazy/non-ambitious/naive/idealistic/compromising on business. I don’t know how other small restaurant owners tried to survive in this small-business-killer pandemic I try to work harder and harder wishing the storm would be over soon. When the sun comes out after the storm I hope I can still get up and enjoy the natural Vitamin-D. Solute to all small business owners! If you are a restaurant owner and washed a lot of dishes during this pandemic, please reach out to me.

From early summer this year to now I see more and more customers choose to eat inside and I see some old friends and new faces. In order to remember them and to keep a record of me working everyday in the restaurant I started a tiny project called “Photo_With_The_Owner” last Friday. I try to take one and only one photo with customers everyday, mark the photo with the exact date and post it on Instagram and Twitter. So far I have 6 photos in a row. If you want to be part of the photo please DM me before your visit. This could be a fun project!

Last blog was in January 2022 and I do need to write blogs more often. During these 10 months I made 14 “Eat With The Owner” episodes. Here are the links to them.

My year 2021!

Today is Jan 3rd 2022 and I find some time to write this blog.

We are in the third year of this pandemic and Quebec premier François Legault announced the lockdown and curfew on Dec 30th 2021 and took effect on the new year eve. Restaurants have to close the dining room for these new lockdown measures.

It came at the right time of the new year eve which is the busiest time of the year for most restaurants. For our restaurant I would see less income since we still have pickup and delivery. But for those restaurants heavily relying on the dine-in, it could be a huge blow for example the brunch restaurants, all-you-can-eat restaurants and steak-house restaurants. They must have stocked up a lot for their upcoming new year rush hours and a lot of materials would be wasted as well.

I guess the premier was caught by surprise by the development of the Omicron virus and restaurant owners were caught by surprise by the next-day-effective lockdown measures, anyway, that’s the reality of the year 2021.

Here is my reflection of the year 2021.

It started with a lockdown in Quebec without vaccines and ended with a lockdown with vaccines and a record number of positive cases and hospitalizations.

The curfew started at 8PM in January 2021 while it started at 10PM in January 2022, some progress at least, positive thinking!

After New Year’s Day, January usually is a low month for restaurant business and it started that way for us too for early 2021.

Then came the tweet from mighty Kim Belair on January 10th 2021 and this event helped us a lot. Please give Kim a follow on Twitter @BagelofDeath. 

I did a lot of media interviews after that tweet and for some time I felt I was famous. A lot of friends gave me advice on how to take advantage of this fleet of fame and make it last much longer. 

A lot of ideas were fighting against each other in my head. At the end of epic battles, only one idea stood tall on the field. Try hard to stay true to myself and try NOT to be someone I am really NOT. But this luck did remind me to engage with social media more.

I started over with my YouTube channel(posted a friendly local soccer game several years ago) and Twitter account (used to learn English 10 years ago, deactivated and reactivated recently). I ate every dish on our menu in front of my iPhone to explain them and these videos are on my YouTube channel and each individual video link was put in the description of that dish on the online menu.

By theory customers would be able to know exactly what each dish would look or taste like and they could have more chances to enjoy the food after checking the videos before ordering them.

Throughout eight years of running this restaurant I have had chances to meet a lot of great customers, great people. Some conversations make me appreciate more and more peoples’ stories including my own. Being an immigrant from China I have a lot of interesting memories about my past and living in Montreal is a great experience for me.   

I want to record original stories from a lot of people in Montreal, anyone who has any connections to Montreal, visitors, travelers, recent immigrants, citizens are welcomed to be part of my video series “Eat With The Owner”. We will eat and chat for about 2.5 hours (or any length you like), no cutting or editing to the video and we keep it very original.

Our first guest Mical Moser joined the video on June 28th 2021 and in the past 6 months we have had 22 guests already. I am so lucky to be able to know them and record their stories on video. This is a huge achievement for me and I am so grateful that many people are willing to share their stories with me in front of a camera. I hope in the future I can interview a lot more people in Montreal and together we can make a mosaic of the experience of Montreal.

As a Chinese restaurant owner, I experienced a lot of business struggles in the past (and ongoing) and I can totally relate to the hardship of some of my fellow restaurant owners. In the year 2021 I promoted several local restaurants on my social media and I will keep doing that and support local businesses.

In the past year, I spent most of my time cutting vegetables and listening to podcasts at the same time. Taking orders and packing food. From the end of July to the end of December 2021(lockdown), when our dining room was open for the first time since March 2020, I often worked as a waiter inside the restaurant. 

I guess by listening to podcasts and shooting “Eat With The Owner” videos with guests I improved my English a lot.

Also I spent some time self learning French.

And our restaurant is NOT bankrupt yet.

I think I had an OK year in 2021.

Somehow I am not too excited about the year 2022 and I didn’t post new year greetings or resolutions on social media. Maybe I am tired, physically and mentally.

I just realized that I now have an answer to the question I am often asked, what is my favourite dish at Cuisine AuntDai?

For the traditional Chinese dishes, I would pick “Braised Pork Belly with Sweet Potato noodles” aka “Hong Shao Rou”, here is the video, please do watch it before you order it.

For the Canadian Chinese dishes, I would recommend “General Tao Chicken”, no AKA.

Here is the video, still recommend you watch it since we may have a different version from other Chinese restaurants.

Here are the new episodes of “Eat With The Owner”.

For those who wonder if the dog in the picture is mine. I have to point it out that we met at a farm for the first time in the summer of 2021. The dog was so friendly and all over me right after we saw each other. Sometimes I hope people are friendly and passionate like that too. Ohh, little bit less!

A great customer from Ottawa

Today is Nov 23rd 2021 and it’s the middle of the night already. I feel I have to write this article to express my appreciation of a postcard and photo from Tanya Hewitt today.

This mail could have arrived several days ago but I just picked it up this morning. I have to admit I don’t check the mailbox in the restaurant that often.

Here is how I met them.

One night in September 2021, three customers came in. When I talked to them, one of them started joking with me right away, later I found out his name was Robert. I really like people with a great sense of humor with strangers and I told him that he must be a comedian or someone doing public speeches. I guess I was not too off. I threw jokes back at Robert and I got more time to know his two friends, Tanya and her husband. It turned out Tanya was the hero of the story. She heard my story on CBC national radio “As It Happens” which is a very popular show and I was interviewed by the host Caral Off. She lives in Ottawa and some business or personal reason brought her visiting to Montreal so she paid a visit to our restaurant.

I always enjoy exchanging stories with our customers and they seemed to enjoy the conversations as well. So I spent a lot of time chatting with them and also I brought a bottle of sake to drink with them and took photos too. It was a great time for me to know them personally and that’s a huge reward for me as a restaurant owner. Having this restaurant is a huge burden to me, physically and mentally, especially compared to my rather easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy full time IT job. But, with all the hardship of running this restaurant, a huge reward to me is that I can meet a lot of people, talk to them, know their stories, see a lot of ideas, feel a lot of beautiful souls. I always think people’s minds are the most beautiful thing in this far-from-good world.

She mentioned she wrote some articles, from what I could tell, Tanya could write very well while Robert talks a lot. And Tanya’s husband doesn’t have a lot of words in front of strangers. Tanya told me she would write an article about me someday. And she did, and it’s Robert who sent me the link through Facebook. 

View at Medium.com

The article was beautifully written and there are a lot of good words describing me and I think “I am not THAT good”. I am just a guy trying to better myself and live a meaningful life. I have so many shortcomings and I am not brave sometimes. I had so many dreams but kept waking up. Reading this article makes me realize that as long as I keep working hard and be more truthful, more and more people will encourage me.

Now Tanya mailed a hand-written postcard and the photo we took together.

Very thoughtful and touching.

Now it’s really late at night. I have to rest, otherwise I may have black eyes tomorrow morning.

I made two videos of the “Eat With The Owner” series.

Also, I am staring to upload the audio only version of the “Eat With The Owner” to my Spotify channel.

The link is here.

How to deal with a future of uncertainty

Today, November 15th of 2021, we are still in the middle of this pandemic. It looks like the cases are stable in Quebec after the majority of the population are vaccinated but you don’t see the end of it and it could well drag on for at least a year or even longer.

Inflation is a huge challenge for everybody now. After almost two years of less production, basing one supply-demand system, the inflation is a natural result. The question is how much higher the inflation will go in the near future.

The shortage of staff is driving up wages for a lot of industries. If you are a worker and you may find it’s in your favor now. But with inflation reducing the purchasing power, your salary increase could be easily erased. Plus, in the long term, a lot of businesses may be forced to close and job opportunities may decrease dramatically over time if an economic crisis happens. I am not an expert on the economy but if the whole society is producing less and less, at one point, things could break.

As a small business owner, both inflation and shortage of labor are squeezing us on top of less sales.

It concerns me a lot recently and I am not sure about the future of my restaurant. Sometimes I feel pretty down then I find some positive signs or at least I have to make myself think positively. I have a lot of friends, full-time employees or business owners, they feel uneasy with the current economic picture. 

We are entering a period of uncertainty and I hope this article can help some people to relax a little bit.

I am a believer of the market system and I think the market itself will find a balance after some time.

The situation of inflation right now is the cumulative result of labor shortage due to the pandemic. The trend may continue for some time but once the pandemic situation is getting better more people will join back the labor market to push up the production and drive down the price. 

What we can do right now is to weather this storm and stay calm. When the storm comes you stay low and protect yourself. After it’s gone the sunshine will resume.

As an employee, you can focus on your skills and inflation won’t affect you much right now. Just keep some savings and try not to borrow too much. You will be more than fine.

This is mainly for small business owners. 

A good percentage of small businesses suffered a lot during this pandemic already and I have the experience firsthand. This is especially true for restaurant owners. When the shipping containers became a huge issue starting July 2021 the cost of food just took off. I was panicking once in a while since then and still I don’t see any improvement on either labor market or food cost.

My worries about the business future are like riding a roller coaster. 

Here is how I deal with the feeling of uncertainty. I hope it may help others with similar situations or help myself.

1)The pandemic will end sooner or later.

2)As long as we focus on improving our products and services the business and profit margin will bounce back when things come back normal.

3)The market will balance out the inflation either by raising prices and wages, some businesses may raise the prices earlier or later, at the end of the day, it will balance. When the labor market is back to normal the market will promote efficiency through competition like usual everything will fall into their places.

4)Canada has a good social safety net and even you fall a little bit at one point. If you keep improving you will come back up really quick.

5)For myself, in this strange period of pandemic I have a lot of time to improve my English by listening to podcasts. Knowing that I am improving everyday makes me feel happy. You can find something you want to work on and feel good when you achieve something even though sometimes you may lose a little bit financially.

6)Always adapt to a changed environment and stay positive. Everything will turn out fine.

7)If you still feel uneasy I may be able to help you. Let’s talk on my interview video “Eat With The Owner”.

In the meantime I spent some time recording some interviews with a lot of great guests.

Here are the links to these YouTube videos and you can always find my channel by searching “Feigang”.

You can support me by subscribing to my channel.

Canada General Election during the pandemic

Justin Trudeau, Canada’s Supreme Leader, Make it pointy!

I am really shocked to hear we are going to have a federal election in September because Justin Trudeau chose to dissolve his minority government.

As a small restaurant owner it may be wise NOT to talk about politics since my point of view could upset some customers. But I don’t think a lot of people will read my blogs and it won’t be a big deal, this is more a record of what I am thinking right now.

I do think a lot and watch many videos to improve my English but I am politically homeless. I like some ideas on one side and like some other policies on the other side. It is more practical to see different policies on different issues, case by case, like they say, devils in the details.

Everybody may agree that small businesses suffer a lot during this pandemic. It’s almost impossible for the owners of closed businesses to vote for him.

The motive of Justin Trudeau to give up his prime minister position to take the chance of an election must be his calculation of winning a majority government.

So he is very confident that he did a good job so far after seeing a favorable polling number for him before his BIG decision. People and businesses are suffering now. To avoid more Covid cases or hospitalizations, people cannot return to offices and businesses in downtown areas are ruined, operations are postponed, people cannot see their loved ones. Now for the election, tens of millions of people need to come out to vote (gathering maybe) and people gather together to count votes afterwards,  only for him to become majority PM from current minority PM, this is called GREED, this may well backfire on him. 

It’s like your house is on fire, instead of trying your best to put out the fire, the leader of the house tries to grab more power by holding an election. Madness!

The decision to call for a new election in this pandemic may deduct 10 points from him already. The fact that he thought he did well so far is troubling as well. The economy is really bad, lack of productivity,  huge inflation, business bankruptions, and the only thing he did was to hand out money (deficit, I am totally OK to help out the people who need it) and buy a lot of vaccines (I give some credit to him for this). His performance and miscalculation of his winning odds show he is INCOMPETENT!

To be fair, I will throw out some ideas here to show why I am saying he is incompetent!

At the beginning of the pandemic, we could have set up some factories in Canada to produce PPE and ventilators since we have a lot of land and low cost clean electricity. With the automation now, setting up factory lines is not very labor demanding. 

Work with American pharmaceutical companies to get the license and authorization to produce vaccines in Canada, so we will have a lot of vaccines ourselves and help other nations. I guess this will boost his EGOs.

When the Canada-China relationship was at its lowest point he chose to co-develop a vaccine with China, is that reverse-thinking? Pure GENIUS, and we all know what happened to that, right? Please note, in Canada we do have first-class bio labs and top-notch researchers and pharmaceutical companies. Probably we could develop a good vaccine by ourselves. Joining force with American peers would put Canada in a much better position on the vaccine front.

Set up factories to produce rapid test kits under US license and use these rapid tests to safeguard important facilities for example meat producers, farms, transportation companies, 

Long term care homes, key businesses. If manpower is not enough for some key industries, we should put soldiers to help since we may not need them to defend our country during this pandemic. The army did help some senior residents in Quebec and Ontario, credit here.

He is from Montreal and we have the most potholes in the whole world. When his highness was bumping into the air in his car, I am wondering if he thinks it’s a bouncing castle experience, he may like the fun. Everybody knows it’s the corruption that causes the bad quality of the road and no leaders have the courage or willingness to fix it. To track the accountability of the construction companies will be an easy solution. This shame is on different levels of leadership not only on him.

Talk about leadership, with my limited knowledge, I see a lot of incompetency in our public sectors. In Montreal, they wanted to limit the plastic bag usage, they passed bylaws to ban thin plastic bags and can only use thick plastic bags hoping people will reuse them. The reality is people still use them as single-use only, it’s not as strong as cloth green bags, this simply adds more plastic usage per bag. If you want people to use less plastic bags you need to provide a feasible alternative, for example, cheap paper bags. For restaurant takeout, you have to have either plastic bags or paper bags, when you pass laws to force them to only use expensive paper bags, you simply assume restaurant owners have a lot of extra money to absorb this extra cost especially after the bleeding during this pandemic. We can have solutions to provide cheap paper bags, remember we have plenty of pulp in Canada, we are famous for that. The government can encourage more factories here to produce paper bags, worst case, subsidise them a little bit. When you have this industry strong, it will protect the environment and create jobs.

For recycling paper and plastics, have you noticed almost all the recycle trucks mix the stuff from recycle bins with soiled dirty stuff, they simply send them to landfill. It’s just a feel-good show wasting people’s time and money. It’s like people pretending to be sleeping, so funny, all the leaders chanting “protect the environment”, when can we be real? If you don’t believe me, please follow some recycling trucks to see for yourself.

If you really care about the environment, you need to foster a chain of companies to process the recycled materials, to make sure they can have the efficiency to make money.

I notice the automatic can/bottle recycling machines in most grocery stores are really good. I believe the aluminum cans and plastic bottles recycled there can be reused efficiently. But those machines only accept certain preset bar codes on the can or bottle. In my opinion, the government could work with these beverage companies to set up a standard for barcodes on their bottles. To recycle easily, prefer the aluminum first, plastic second and glass last. All imported beverage drinks follow the same barcode standard. Also we can expand this outside of beverages. This way, recycling companies can make profit and much less stuff goes to landfills.

Please take advantage of the information technologies, we are in 21 century. We could achieve all of these easily, transparently and cost effectively.

In Canada, most electricity comes from clean hydro-power and we are so blessed with the abundance. Canada should be the best electric car market and manufacturer. We should have worked with Tesla to set up a lot of Mega factories in Canada, please check their automation assembly line videos, it’s so efficient and high-tech. Here in Canada we have a lot of land, clean electricity and a lot of talents as well, the government should extend their hands to Elon Musk. If you really love the environment, show us.

Even though we don’t have good terms with Elon Musk on setting up factories here we should at least subsidize a lot to have all cars sold here electric since we have the CLEAN cheap electricity!

Every time I sit in traffic knowing all the cars are burning gasoline doing nothing I feel bad about the environment. All the leaders are talking about protecting the environment, fixing the traffic, and changing to electric cars!

Remember we are part of G7 and I have to Google it to see what it means.

The G7 (Group of Seven) is an organization of the world’s seven largest so-called advanced economies.

Now look at Canada, what industries are we leading?

Justin Trudeau already patted on his own back saying he did a good job already.

You have been in power for almost 6 years, what results have been achieved?

In my own opinion, you have already proven you are NOT capable of leading this beautiful country. You don’t have to be good at everything. Personally I like you but this is not a job for you.

You are very handsome and charming, you have a lot of fortune and bear a great family name. People having half of what you have should already be very satisfactory. You don’t have to pursue fame, you cannot have it all. Sometimes egos do hold you down. If you suck on this very important post, leave the chance to others who may be really good at it since it’s really important for the people.

I share a quote from Elon Musk, he actually said to someone who was pissing him off in the Tesla factory

“You know, I could be drinking mai tais with naked supermodels, but instead I’m here with you.” 

The quote is in this article from The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/aug/29/the-smartest-person-in-any-room-anywhere-in-defence-of-elon-musk-by-douglas-coupland

I think you may think about that a little bit. I mean relaxing.

It won’t be a failure anyway, everybody has limits, people are good at different things.

Sometimes one person’s failure could be a success for a country, and likewise!

Besides you speak English and French perfectly and I admire that a lot. 

If you lose the election this time, I hope you can relax and come to help me improve my French and English.

But I do wish you good luck, at least you are trying to win!

I hope this article won’t offend you and that’s not my intention.

I believe a maximum of 100 people may read this blog and most of them won’t agree with me at all.

Like what I wrote on my business card, trying to be funny, don’t be too serious.

PS. I worked my ass off during this pandemic to keep our restaurant business open and I spent almost 3 hours tonight on this article. 

Hope readers like it.

I am really tired.

I was not patient today

I try to be very patient and provide best services possible as long as I am serving customers myself.

This noon I failed and I regretted right away when they left.

I feel I have to write this down to remind myself that I should always improve my services to our customers. At the same time I can better myself.

Here is what happened.

At lunch time, we have three customers sitting by the window.

After one or two dishes were served one of them came to me asking not putting black beans in all plates since her friend is allergic to it and I answered all the plates ordered did not contain black beans. But I could be wrong since the black beans could be different things by their definition and this misunderstanding could be common for ingredients. After some time, she came to me asking an extra serving plate for her friend to hold some food that does not contain black beans for sure. I told her there was no black beans but she insisted saying just in case. I said “anyway, for sure” and turned away to take an extra plate for her. But she may feel I was not friendly. Three of them ordered five dishes and they have some left over for each of them. One of them asked for boxes to take home and I asked for how many. He said 5 boxes and I asked ” are you sure you need 5?” He said “if you don’t mind”. I said “for sure” but at the same time I don’t know why I shrugged and turned away to get some boxes. But that may well leave this customer feel I was trying to save some boxes. I realized that issue right away then I tried to make it up in the following conversations.

At the end, they only used three boxes. They said they liked the food but we said farewell friendly. But I felt really bad about my services and I knew I made a mistake.

I am also a people person and I should always be very patient to all requests and make customers enjoy the experience at our restaurant.

Sometimes when we are really busy or we are short handed we could not provide the level of customer services I would like but in that case I may give myself a pass.

I used to have this motto hanging on the side wall of our first restaurant at Cote-des-Neiges. It says “Never Stop Improving”, I hope I can keep up!

Any feedback is very welcomed to me directly by social media or email.

My personal Youtube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCELmUHgHGJRj_yQr7gFcAqA

Facebook—>https://www.facebook.com/CuisineAuntDai

Instagram—->https://www.instagram.com/AuntDai

Twitter——>https://www.twitter.com/FeigangFei