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Ottawa's Chinese restaurants, already hobbled by COVID-19, feel the absence of international students
Author of the article:
Peter Hum
Publishing date:
Sep 23, 2020 • Last Updated 9 hours ago • 4 minute read
OTTAWA- September 21, 2020 -- Chef Wang prepares noodles at 98Lala Noodles in Ottawa, September 21, 2020. PHOTO BY JEAN LEVAC /Postmedia News
In better times earlier this year, the Somerset Street West restaurant Hey Kitchen was reliably packed.
Opened last November, the narrow, casual eatery a block west of the Ottawa Chinatown Royal Arch soon became a hangout for Chinese students attending Ottawa’s post-secondary institutions. They were steady customers who came back for Hey Kitchen’s taste-of-home noodle dishes and hefty omelet-and-rice specialties served nowhere else in the city.
“Before COVID, business was great,” says Nick Huang, son of the restaurant’s owners.
But during a recent weekday lunch, Hey Kitchen drew just one university-age customer, a table of three apparent Chinese visitors and one more table of three. The restaurant attracted more delivery people than dine-in visitors. Still, co-owner Ling You was scrupulous about her restaurant’s COVID-19 cleanliness, moving quickly to sanitize tables and chairs as soon as they were vacated.
She and her husband, assisted by their high-school age son, now operate the restaurant on their own. They can no longer afford to hire servers. In any case, two of those servers have returned to China, as have many of the restaurant’s regulars, who have likely opted to take their Carleton University or University of Ottawa courses online from the other side of the world.
“It’s very, very hard,” Huang says. “Gradually more and more students started going back. They’re still some, but very few.”
It’s been tough enough these past six months for any Ottawa restaurant to pivot and survive during the pandemic. But restaurants such as Hey Kitchen, which have proliferated in Ottawa in the last few years as the ranks of Chinese students in Ottawa have grown, are facing a unique additional dilemma this fall — much of their core market has seemingly left Canada, preferring to get through the pandemic in their homeland.
For the universities and colleges in Ottawa, it’s either too early or too hard to quantify that exodus. For comparison’s sake, Steven Reid, a Carleton University media relations officer, said that Carleton in the fall of 2019 had more than 1,600 international students from China.
Some admittedly anecdotal estimates by Ottawa restaurateurs are grim.
“I think 80 per cent or 90 per cent (of the students) have gone back to China. They all have online courses. Now, Canada is, like, worse than China for COVID,” says Zilang Zhang, who is one of four partners that own Bee Home, a snack-oriented Chinese restaurant on Somerset Street West.
Owners L to R: Joe Liu, Ziling Zhang, Ziaoyu Jia, Allen Lin at Bee Home Chinese food take-out in Ottawa on September 22, 2020.
You would expect Zhang, a 26-year-old from the northern Chinese province of Shanxi, to know about international students in Ottawa. Not that long ago, he was one himself. He first studied economics at Carleton and then baking at Algonquin College, from which he graduated two years ago.
After Bee Home opened a year ago, Zhang took out a lot of advertising in Chinese media and was able to attract international students with affordable, homey dishes such as braised pork on rice, he says.
But with those students having left, Zhang says he needs to foster a new clientele including walk-in customers. He hopes that renovations and promotions will “let more local people know about our restaurant.”
The shortage of student customers reaches beyond some of Chinatown’s newest eateries to affect businesses in Lowertown that previously drew in international students at uOttawa, as well as some restaurants not that far from Algonquin’s Woodroffe campus.
Wang Dong, owner of 98 La La Noodles on George Street, says the departure of Chinese students has caused a staffing shortage at his one-year-old restaurant. While he previously employed 24 students part-time, now he has just five on the payroll.
“All of us are working 12 hours a day, seven days a week,” Wang says.
He will not reduce his opening hours, as many restaurants have. “We want to keep the door open for regular customers,” Wang says. “We try to get past the difficult times and have people remember us.”
Fortunately, Wang’s hand-pulled noodle dishes have found a new following among Lowertown residents, helping to offset the student-customer shortage. This week, Wang cheerily greeted neighbours as they strolled past his restaurant’s patio.
Owner Wang Dong of 98Lala Noodles in Ottawa, September 21, 2020. PHOTO BY JEAN LEVAC /Postmedia News
On Rideau Street east of Dalhousie Street, a series of very modest businesses cater to Chinese students.
Among them is Shanghai Wonton Noodle, a hole-in-the-wall where owner Kenny Wu looked out at an empty restaurant on a recent afternoon. Asked if he was worried about the future, Wu laughed and said: “Just keep going. Don’t worry about business.”
At Wu’s neighbour, the Presotea bubble tea franchise, manager Mika Huang says her business has decreased by half and that she is worried about fall and winter. “It’s going to be very hard,” she says, adding that the federal government’s wage subsidies have been a boon for her business.
At Shanghai One, the upscale, three-year-old restaurant in a Merivale Road strip mall, owner Wenying Yu notes that the larger Chinese expat community stopped going out for restaurant meals earlier than did other Canadians.
At her 250-seat restaurant, the drop in customers occurred in late January, right after China locked down Wuhan, the city where the novel coronavirus originated.
Yu says she had to cancel a sold-out Chinese New Year event in late January because of COVID-19 fears. “Everybody got really nervous. You don’t know who just came back from China,” she says.
Wenying Yu of Shanghai One restaurant in Ottawa. PHOTO BY JEAN LEVAC /Postmedia News
Yu says her restaurant was popular with Chinese students from Algonquin, Carleton and uOttawa who booked its private rooms for birthday parties.
With the arrival of the pandemic’s second wave, Yu is not optimistic. She notes on a recent night, she had just two tables of customers.
“Since infection rates are going up, we are going down again,” she says. “I don’t know if we can survive.”
phum@postmedia.com
ottawacitizen.com
Author of the article:
Peter Hum
Publishing date:
Sep 23, 2020 • Last Updated 9 hours ago • 4 minute read
OTTAWA- September 21, 2020 -- Chef Wang prepares noodles at 98Lala Noodles in Ottawa, September 21, 2020. PHOTO BY JEAN LEVAC /Postmedia News
In better times earlier this year, the Somerset Street West restaurant Hey Kitchen was reliably packed.
Opened last November, the narrow, casual eatery a block west of the Ottawa Chinatown Royal Arch soon became a hangout for Chinese students attending Ottawa’s post-secondary institutions. They were steady customers who came back for Hey Kitchen’s taste-of-home noodle dishes and hefty omelet-and-rice specialties served nowhere else in the city.
“Before COVID, business was great,” says Nick Huang, son of the restaurant’s owners.
But during a recent weekday lunch, Hey Kitchen drew just one university-age customer, a table of three apparent Chinese visitors and one more table of three. The restaurant attracted more delivery people than dine-in visitors. Still, co-owner Ling You was scrupulous about her restaurant’s COVID-19 cleanliness, moving quickly to sanitize tables and chairs as soon as they were vacated.
She and her husband, assisted by their high-school age son, now operate the restaurant on their own. They can no longer afford to hire servers. In any case, two of those servers have returned to China, as have many of the restaurant’s regulars, who have likely opted to take their Carleton University or University of Ottawa courses online from the other side of the world.
“It’s very, very hard,” Huang says. “Gradually more and more students started going back. They’re still some, but very few.”
It’s been tough enough these past six months for any Ottawa restaurant to pivot and survive during the pandemic. But restaurants such as Hey Kitchen, which have proliferated in Ottawa in the last few years as the ranks of Chinese students in Ottawa have grown, are facing a unique additional dilemma this fall — much of their core market has seemingly left Canada, preferring to get through the pandemic in their homeland.
For the universities and colleges in Ottawa, it’s either too early or too hard to quantify that exodus. For comparison’s sake, Steven Reid, a Carleton University media relations officer, said that Carleton in the fall of 2019 had more than 1,600 international students from China.
Some admittedly anecdotal estimates by Ottawa restaurateurs are grim.
“I think 80 per cent or 90 per cent (of the students) have gone back to China. They all have online courses. Now, Canada is, like, worse than China for COVID,” says Zilang Zhang, who is one of four partners that own Bee Home, a snack-oriented Chinese restaurant on Somerset Street West.
Owners L to R: Joe Liu, Ziling Zhang, Ziaoyu Jia, Allen Lin at Bee Home Chinese food take-out in Ottawa on September 22, 2020.
You would expect Zhang, a 26-year-old from the northern Chinese province of Shanxi, to know about international students in Ottawa. Not that long ago, he was one himself. He first studied economics at Carleton and then baking at Algonquin College, from which he graduated two years ago.
After Bee Home opened a year ago, Zhang took out a lot of advertising in Chinese media and was able to attract international students with affordable, homey dishes such as braised pork on rice, he says.
But with those students having left, Zhang says he needs to foster a new clientele including walk-in customers. He hopes that renovations and promotions will “let more local people know about our restaurant.”
The shortage of student customers reaches beyond some of Chinatown’s newest eateries to affect businesses in Lowertown that previously drew in international students at uOttawa, as well as some restaurants not that far from Algonquin’s Woodroffe campus.
Wang Dong, owner of 98 La La Noodles on George Street, says the departure of Chinese students has caused a staffing shortage at his one-year-old restaurant. While he previously employed 24 students part-time, now he has just five on the payroll.
“All of us are working 12 hours a day, seven days a week,” Wang says.
He will not reduce his opening hours, as many restaurants have. “We want to keep the door open for regular customers,” Wang says. “We try to get past the difficult times and have people remember us.”
Fortunately, Wang’s hand-pulled noodle dishes have found a new following among Lowertown residents, helping to offset the student-customer shortage. This week, Wang cheerily greeted neighbours as they strolled past his restaurant’s patio.
Owner Wang Dong of 98Lala Noodles in Ottawa, September 21, 2020. PHOTO BY JEAN LEVAC /Postmedia News
On Rideau Street east of Dalhousie Street, a series of very modest businesses cater to Chinese students.
Among them is Shanghai Wonton Noodle, a hole-in-the-wall where owner Kenny Wu looked out at an empty restaurant on a recent afternoon. Asked if he was worried about the future, Wu laughed and said: “Just keep going. Don’t worry about business.”
At Wu’s neighbour, the Presotea bubble tea franchise, manager Mika Huang says her business has decreased by half and that she is worried about fall and winter. “It’s going to be very hard,” she says, adding that the federal government’s wage subsidies have been a boon for her business.
At Shanghai One, the upscale, three-year-old restaurant in a Merivale Road strip mall, owner Wenying Yu notes that the larger Chinese expat community stopped going out for restaurant meals earlier than did other Canadians.
At her 250-seat restaurant, the drop in customers occurred in late January, right after China locked down Wuhan, the city where the novel coronavirus originated.
Yu says she had to cancel a sold-out Chinese New Year event in late January because of COVID-19 fears. “Everybody got really nervous. You don’t know who just came back from China,” she says.
Wenying Yu of Shanghai One restaurant in Ottawa. PHOTO BY JEAN LEVAC /Postmedia News
Yu says her restaurant was popular with Chinese students from Algonquin, Carleton and uOttawa who booked its private rooms for birthday parties.
With the arrival of the pandemic’s second wave, Yu is not optimistic. She notes on a recent night, she had just two tables of customers.
“Since infection rates are going up, we are going down again,” she says. “I don’t know if we can survive.”
phum@postmedia.com
Ottawa's Chinese restaurants, already hobbled by COVID-19, feel the absence of international students
In better times earlier this year, the Somerset Street West restaurant Hey Kitchen was reliably packed.
