It Took a Pandemic for Chef Chanthy Yen to Open the Restaurant of His Dreams

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It Took a Pandemic for Chef Chanthy Yen to Open the Restaurant of His Dreams
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The pandemic forced him to stop, reflect, and start making the food that inspired him to become a chef in the first place. Now, his Cambodian pop-up Touk has lines down the block.

Fleeing the Cambodian civil war in the 1980s, chef Chanthy Yen’s parents and grandparents arrived as refugees to Windsor, Ontario, a sleepy Canadian town ten minutes from Detroit. Yen grew up in his grandmother’s kitchen; she taught him everything she knew about traditional Cambodian cuisine. It ignited a passion for cooking, and more importantly, it opened opportunities.

Touk serves only a handful of Cambodian dishes, many of which you won’t find in any other restaurant in Montreal, maybe even Canada. It’s my grandmother’s teachings filtered through my Canadian lens and using contemporary techniques gathered throughout my career. Touk is temporarily inside Parliament, an elevated British pub where I was the executive chef before the pandemic forced us to close and rethink our next move.

Being queer and a visible minority, I always had to prove myself. I learned English late, which made it hard to relate to other kids and immediately isolated me. I never saw myself reflected in others and always felt like I had to pave my own way, alone. The culinary world was no different. I was stereotyped in the kitchens I worked in—put in pastries because I was “feminine” or fish because I was Asian. I was called names and hidden away in the back of the kitchen.

Especially at this moment in time, I’ve needed that space to speak my mind and my heart. Not just to get through this crisis but to defend myself from the racism I face now, more frequent and brazen. People dart away while I’m grocery shopping, tell me to go back to my country, or move off the sidewalk where I’m walking. A man once yelled, “No COVID here, you Chinese f#%”.

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