Laowai — Restaurant in Vancouver

Was looking forward to finally checking this spot out since I’m not often in town over the weekends. My friend had also gotten child care for the night so we could go out and check this place out. We came and asked for a #7 at approximately 8:45pm. We were told there was a bit of a wait but that she could take my name and number down and let us know via text when our table was ready but that it would likely be at least 1.5hrs… We said no problem, gave our info and went somewhere else to pass the time. We had yet to receive a text at 11:30pm which seemed extremely odd.

We decided to go back incase maybe the wrong number was written down since the closing time just said open til late. We came back at 11:43pm and saw the same girl we originally spoke with. She asked our name and flipped through a full page and a half of names who had come after we had listed with checkmarks by all the other names… It was very apparent that she had either forgotten or didn’t bother calling us for our table. We pretended we didn’t notice as we were still keen on having a drink.

First she tried to tell us that she would make sure we were the next table sat (no one else was around waiting for a table) and it shouldn’t be too long and that she would look and see if anything was available. As she was entering the room, three people left. She came back shortly and said it was currently still full and that they were closing in 15 minutes so we could wait (longer than the 3hrs we already waited) but there was no guarantee we would get sat… I then asked her about the table the three people just left? She then said, “Oh they were at a booth and we can’t sit two there…” Instead of arguing, we said nothing and went outside to discuss whether we’d wait or not.

It was a quiet night especially for a Saturday. There were a few tables ahead of us when we first arrived so waiting was to be expected and totally fine, but the fact that she clearly messed up &/or chose not to seat us after already making us wait 3hrs and forgetting about us is absolutely ridiculous! The sad part is I also know and work with one of the bartenders and had I name dropped him I’m sure she would’ve had no problem seating us but I‘m not one of those people who does that. Would’ve loved to say nothing but good things but considering the extremely disappointing experience we had. I really hope that...

I felt very weird at this establishment because it made me think about the line between cultural appreciation and appropriation. In my opinion, this place felt like cultural appropriation. I generally love Asian fusion spots, so this spot seemed exactly to my taste.

It started with the demographic of the staff. I did not see a single Asian person there. Was that intentional in the staff decision? On top of that, the clientele was lacking Asian people.

The cocktail menu was written in a way that tries to convey a serious contemplation for Chinese culture and history, but when I asked our waitress for questions, she really couldn't help. It made me feel like the menu was just for "show" to emphasize how this isn't taking advantage of Chinese culture. On top of that, our cocktails did not taste good... My friends cocktail legitimately tasted like Clorox, and nothing like the Asian flavors I'm used to at Asian fusion restaurants.

The food was fine, but it felt like someone who said "what are asian flavors? Let me stuff it into a dumpling and see if it works." It felt uninspired and rather like it tried too hard to be unique, causing just a weird flavor experience in a bad way.

I hope what happened here is that someone loves Chinese culture and history and tried to pay homage to it, but it got lost in translation. Please be respectful to the culture you celebrate: educate your staff about the cuisine and flavors or hire more diverse staff! I really hope the demographic of the staffing decision isn't intentional though because that really is odd...

Also part of me thinks "is this whole spot supposed to be ironic? Was the staffing supposed to mock the actual clientle who would buy into cultural appropriation? If we can't make them understand, let's at least mock their ignorance and take advantage of them?" In that case, this spot is genius and very clever but I don't think doing that for your benefit is the best for the greater good.

With all of that said, the...

Context: we are two Asians - one of HK descent and one of Korean descent; I have a social science background and work in advisory services in the international affairs sector. I consider myself well-read on contemporary social mores and know the passions that drive the “woke” community.

I did not experience racism at any point of my stay, and I wonder if this is just a quick reach for a lot of people. Big hat lady was pretty nice to me. I got entry thru intel provided at Bagheera. There was a wait so we went to Keefer for an hour or so and left when our table was ready.

I kind of chuckled at the idea of seeing no visible Asian staff but also seeing all the homages being made in the menu and the interior. The interior of Keefer does much the same. It’s apologist gentrification trying to at least show some respect to the roots of the neighbourhood. I don’t expect the employees to be cultural or history experts, although it may help in the service of an experience. I came for drinks and mixology. The book contains a lot of detail already, but nicely simplified for the average reader. I don’t see anything wrong with that and from my experience my Asian compatriots don’t usually show a very strong acumen for other-culture understanding or deep-dive analysis.

Just chill and enjoy your drink, or not. Don’t let your saltiness drive you to draw the inferences you want to be real in order to self-soothe. Private businesses are free to smell their own decisions about who to serve and if you perceive you are not welcome or going to be treated the way you feel entitled to then why would you want to be so eager patronize such an establishment anyway? Depersonalise your experience.

Drink reviews (what we had):

Chronic relief - yes GI jade - hard no Dance monkey - yes Seoul sister - hard no

There was a rather intoxicated and obnoxious group near us but it wasn’t anything that made it uncomfortable for us to be there.

We...