Best New Restaurants 2015: #20, Patois

By Mark Pupo | Photography by Dave Gillespie

I wouldn’t have thought it wise to mess with chow mein until I had Craig Wong’s bastardized version with churrasco-roasted jerk chicken, the spice heat rocketing through the crisped noodles. Like Nick Liu and Fan Zhang, he’s one of a new cohort of chefs, many from the burbs, who are light years past “ethnic” food. He’s chasing the flavours of his youth, pairing pierogi-style pot stickers with kimchee-flavoured sour cream, burgers with Chinese pineapple buns, steak with oyster sauce, and battered green beans with shreds of nori. It’s a delicious and totally Toronto mash-up.