SCREEN | Recollections of a Vietnamese Rebellion – 'New Wave' Culture

"I was chasing a story about a bunch of Vietnamese-American rebels."

Photo credit | Yudi Echevarria/Angel City Press

Chinese-Vietnamese-American director Elizabeth Ai explores the immigrant experience through music in her fun but meaningful documentary, New Wave. All about the influence of the titular genre of music and its effects on the pop culture of the Vietnamese diaspora emerging from 1980s Southern California, the film takes an interesting approach to dissecting the unspoken collective intergenerational trauma of these children of refugees after the fall of Saigon in 1975.

IMBIBE | Good Thief x Rebellious Vietnamese x Riley Park

"It's a venture into the unexplored territories of flavour and design."

Riley Park–Little Mountain—(July 25, 2024) From co-founders/siblings Vincent and Amélie Thuy Nguyễn, the same "older brother and sister" duo behind the award-winning, authentic Vietnamese restaurant slyly named after themselves, Anh and Chi (since 2016), comes their hotly anticipated, recently opened next door culinary side project, the cheekily named Good Thief—a name purposely evoking a modern day Robin Hood.

CABLE | 'The Sympathizer' Betrays South Vietnam on HBO

"All wars are fought twice."

A24 / Rhombus Media

The unlikely international filmmaking pairing of Korean auteur Park Chan-wook and Toronto director Don McKellar adapts Vietnamese-American professor Việt Thanh Nguyễn's bestselling 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning debut novel The Sympathizer (aka Cảm tình viên) into a dizzingly postmodern historical miniseries dissecting the complex political machinations in the immediate aftermath of a post-Vietnam War United States in the late 1970s.

WEEKENDER | Patti Harrison Live x Just For Laughs x Vogue Theatre

"You better start agreeing with me right now!"

I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson

Granville—(February 17, 2024) On Saturday night, I spent over an hour witnessing Ohio-born actress/comedian Patti Harrison perform her truly bizarre but side-splitting My Huge Tits Huge Because They Are Infected Not Fake! show—previously seen at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and New York Comedy Festival—alongside hundreds of other fans seated inside the Vogue Theatre as part of the annual ten-day-long eighth annual Just for Laughs Vancouver live comedy festival.

REEL | John David Washington Meets 'The Creator'

"She dies with the rest of them."

20th Century Studios / New Regency

Embattled Rogue One director Gareth Edwards makes a somewhat triumphant return to blockbuster filmmaking after a seven-year absence. The Creator is a visually arresting, often technically dazzling original piece of highly derivative sci-fi entertainment.

CABLE | Steven Yeun and Ali Wong Settle Their 'Beef' on Netflix

"Western therapy doesn't work on the Eastern minds."

A24 Television

Tuca & Bertie co-stars Steven Yeun and Ali Wong reteam for creator Lee Sung Jin's towering feud dark comedy series, Beef. Both leads are exceptionally dynamic, sizzling in their broad emotional range as dramatic performers. It's hard to telegraph where the strange action of the show is heading as Lee inserts a ton of situational surprises from episode to episode.

FEAST | Plant-based Cuisine x Nightshade x Yaletown

Yaletown—(February 4, 2022) Downtown's trendy new plant-based Nightshade Restaurant offers a plethora of high-end vegan dishes in an appealing atmosphere. Spearheaded by the Sattva Hospitality team and Montreal-based Canadian-Cambodian Executive Chef Chanthy Yen—personal chef to the Prime Minister and his family—the contemporary eatery feels intimately hip and fresh with its contemporary design.

REEL | Disney Rides 'Raya and the Last Dragon' Into Southeast Asia

"We must find the last dragon."

Walt Disney Animation Studios

Walt Disney Animation heads to mythical Southeast Asia for its latest animated action-adventure fantasy tale, Raya and the Last Dragon. Directors Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada animate a typical dragon tale of uniting divided regions into its historically united nation through the use of a magical Dragon Gem everybody covets.

SCREEN | Being Vietnamese – 'No Crying at the Dinner Table'

"So let us listen. That's all."

Travelling Distribution

I have never seen anything so effectively document exactly what it feels like growing up in a Vietnamese-Canadian household than Toronto-born (now Montreal-based) filmmaker Carol Nguyen's award-winning documentary short film, No Crying at the Dinner Table. In the fifteen-minute short, she interviews her parents and sister as they therapeutically describe internalized past traumas around death and their lives as refugees, artfully intercut with intimate b-roll footage of them performing personal daily rituals revealing their vulnerabilities.

FEAST | New in Town x Cold Tea Restaurant x Granville

wok beef (beef tenderloin tips with pineapple, bell peppers, onion, and cilantro)

Granville—(July 7, 2020) Downtown Vancouver's newest pan-Asian eatery, Cold Tea Restaurant—named after the secret post-last call tradition of covertly serving beer in a teapot (aka "cold tea") and not to be confused with the similarly named Toronto bar—takes over the storied, old Tsui Hang Village location right in the heart of the titular Entertainment District.

SCREEN | Finding Romance – 'In A New York Minute' x VAFF 2019

Vancouver Asian Film Festival

For a film with its setting in the title that doubles as a famous song lyric, first-time Beijing filmmaker Ximan Li's In A New York Minute—not to be confused with the similarly titled 2004 Olsen twins comedy—feels like it could take place anywhere aside from various obligatory NYC establishing shots. Focused on three separate but interconnected love stories about different immigrant Asian-American women, Li's romances tragically fall apart because they potentially have too much to offer.

FEAST | Rabbit Food x Đồ Chay Saigon Vegetarian x Kingsway

vegan bánh bột lọc (rice flour "glass" dumplings stuffed with mushrooms wrapped and steamed in a banana leaf)

Kingsway—(May 25, 2019) The brand new, plant-based Đồ Chay Saigon Vegetarian Restaurant opened recently in Kensington–Cedar Cottage. From the well-known Đỗ family—most notably behind House Special in Yaletown, among other local eateries they've opened (Green Lemongrass and Broken Rice) over the years—the restaurant debuted to high expectations for its anticipated vegan and vegetarian Vietnamese fare.

SCREEN | 93 'Til – You'll 'Always Be My Maybe' on Netflix

"I missed your taste."

There's a specificity to Always Be My Maybe, written and produced by Asian-American comedians and longtime real-life friends Ali Wong and Randall Park, that makes the romantic comedy so refreshingly charming. Clearly influenced by the pair's own experiences, its Asian quality isn't really essential to its humour but enhanced by it thanks to the duo's natural chemistry.

VIFF 2018 | Marrying Off 'The Third Wife'

VIFF 2018—First-time filmmaker Nguyễn Phương Anh (aka Ash Mayfair) tells the historical drama of a fourteen-year-old child bride of a wealthy landowner in nineteenth-century rural Vietnam. The Third Wife sorrowfully transports us to the repressive period full of sensuous colours, to express a pervasive feeling of melancholy.

FEAST | The Rise Eatery x Opening x South Granville

The Routine ramen poutine (with fries, cheese curds, miso gravy, Kewpie mayo, and furikake)

Fairview Slopes—(July 4, 2017) The Rise Eatery is South Granville's newest, globally influenced restaurant, with culinary influences from Argentina to Korea and Germany. The modern sixty-seat bistro opened recently, focusing on elevated dining and sharing plates (think Torafuku meets Heritage Asian Eatery).

FEAST | Dine Out 2017 x House Special x Yaletown

Yaletown—(January 12, 2016) This year's fifteenth annual Dine Out Vancouver Festival is already in full swing with many tempting prix fixe options for you to choose from. Last week, we stopped by the year-old House Special Modern Vietnamese on the second stop of our Tourism Vancouver restaurant tour to sample their three-course $40 set menu paired with Church & State Wines.

FEAST | Specials + Spirits x House Special x Yaletown

Yaletown—(July 13, 2016) More sophisticated and affluent Vietnamese dining establishments are finally on the rise in Vancouver (see Mr. Red Cafe and Anh + Chi for more). Enter House Special Modern Vietnamese, a restaurant specializing in a more upscale experience while remaining true its Southeast Asian roots.

GRUB | New in Town x Anh and Chi Vietnamese x Riley Park

Riley Park–Little Mountain—From the ashes of Phở Hoàng, a fixture on Main Street since 1983, comes Anh and Chi, now a completely revamped, renovated, and rebranded Vietnamese eatery specializing in a hipper culinary experience and more affluent clientele while still aiming to satisfy all our basic dining needs.

GRUB | North Vietnamese x Mr. Red Cafe x East Hastings

Grandview–Woodland—I finally got around to sampling East Vancouver's award-winning North Vietnamese eatery, Mr. Red Cafe, for lunch after much ballyhoo and acclaim. After all, they are the self-proclaimed "Quintessence of Vietnamese cuisine".

From Chicken to Beef x Phnom Penh Restaurant x Chinatown

A Cambodian/Vietnamese dinner at Phnom Penh restaurant in Chinatown on May 27, 2014.



After a belly full of beer from the R&B Brewing event, Dennis and I walked over to Chinatown for an early dinner snack at everyone's favourite Cambo-Viet eatery. The decades old dining institution was fairly empty (a strange experience without their infamous line ups) as we sat down to settle our appetites.