Nick Liu shows off some culturally promiscuous cooking at the preview dinner for his new restaurant, GwaiLo

By Renée Suen | March 15, 2012

By Renée Suen | 03/15/2012

A proud Nick Liu before the second of his GwaiLo preview dinners (Image: Renée Suen)

Earlier this year, chef Nick Liu left Niagara Street Café to launch GwaiLo, a modern Asian brasserie-to-be with business partner Christina Kuypers (Splendido, Drake Hotel, The Black Hoof). The name is a bit of Cantonese slang for foreigners that translates roughly as “white devil”—a term both Liu and Kuypers grew up with, but have light-heartedly embraced (they’re both Canadians with an Asian heritage). It’s also a fitting way to describe their new venture, with the cuisine and cocktail list betraying the influence of a wide range of cultures and ingredients. To drum up buzz for the restaurant (which still has no location), the pair threw two preview dinners in Niagara Street Café’s upstairs dining room, the second of which saw a number of hungry guests (including the folks from Khao San Road and Chantecler) feasting on Liu’s contemporary riffs on traditional Asian plates. While the opening date is still up in the air, Liu does tell us that all of the six courses he served will be on his new menu. Check out the entire sweet, sour, salty and spicy feast in our slideshow »

SHOW CAPTION

RETURN TO ARTICLE

Guests were sent home with limited-edition “banana” T-shirts. (The restaurant’s slogan is “Are you a banana or an egg?,” referring to stereotypes of westernized Chinese and Sinophiles, respectively)

Tapioca pudding: caramelized palm sugar, buckthorn berry sorbet, crispy crêpe roll, fresh goji berries and Peking duck almond brittle, a play on the idea of the Peking duck roll

Vietnamese coffee: a decaffeinated brew that was perfumed with cardamom and a splash of condensed milk

Roasted Nagano pork loin with chili- and black bean-fried brussels sprouts, blue fingerlings and sunchokes in a pork bone broth. This course is based on the popular Korean dish gamjatang (pork bone soup) but uses Nagano pork, a quality product from the Montreal area, in a stylized East-meets-West main. Along with the root vegetables, Liu also scatters the plate with crisp lily buds, nori strips, a single garlic chive and a lightly dusted fried quail egg with a still-oozing yolk. A tumble of pork floss—a childhood favourite of Liu’s—and aside of sticky rice complete the course

The pork bone broth of the roasted Nagano pork loin course was poured tableside from teapots

Whole-fried Trillium Farms trout: served with nahm jim, green curry mayo and soy-mirin glaze. The deep-fried trout strips had a light crust and were piled high with the fish’s cracker-crisp spine, fins and head. The plate was inspired by Liu’s time at Longrain, one of Australia’s top Thai restaurants

Perth pork hock terrine two ways: a pressed sliced terrine and a crispy sweet-and-sour terrine with jellyfish slaw. Liu explains that the pressed version is a riff on a Chinese banquet course that’s typically served with jellyfish (hence the heap on top), while the crispy fried pork hock is simply tossed in sweet-and-sour master sauce. Liu also pointed out that jellyfish, one of the most sustainable ocean species, is not being used enough on menus around town

Eggnet salad: a Thai-influenced salad with green papaya, mung beans, pomelo, mint and lime leaf in a caramelized coconut dressing, all wrapped in a loose omelette web. Caramelized Ontario heart nuts and pecans gave the refreshing slaw a nutty crunch

Crispy silken tofu in a smoky miso broth with toasted nori

Yau ja gwai with a congee dipping sauce. Commonly known as youtiao (Mandarin for “oil stick”), these deep-fried strips of dough are typically served as Chinese breakfast, often accompanied with rice congee or soymilk. Liu called the fried breadsticks by their Cantonese moniker and served them at the meal’s start with a warm and loose congee dipping sauce

The evening’s six-course menu mixed traditional Asian foods with French techniques and Canadian ingredients

Double Happiness: a cocktail concocted by Christina Kuypers made with Jim Beam six-year-aged bourbon, Amaro Montenegro, pineapple shrub and ginger. Kuypers explained that double happiness is the name of a Chinese character often used at Chinese weddings, used here to symbolize the marriage of Liu’s food and Kuypers’ drinks. The sweet sipper had a pleasingly fruity nose and bit of bite

Chef Nick Liu took some time to greet guests as they arrived for the second GwaiLo preview dinner

11 thoughts on “Nick Liu shows off some culturally promiscuous cooking at the preview dinner for his new restaurant, GwaiLo”

BG011 says:

March 15, 2012 at 8:35 pm

This looks awesome! Susur should’ve been doing fun cuisine like this instead of opening (and closing) many restaurants while spreading himself too thin. Can’t wait to try the food.

Best,
gnate says:

March 19, 2012 at 11:49 am

Exciting!!
Futronic says:

March 19, 2012 at 4:16 pm

What’s the address for the new place? It seems like TL often omits details like this in their posts.
Toronto Life Staff says:

March 19, 2012 at 4:34 pm

Futronic: as the post mentions, Liu and Kuypers have yet to announce a location.
Futronic says:

March 19, 2012 at 10:01 pm

I clearly need to get my eyes checked.
banana says:

March 20, 2012 at 8:27 am

You can get any of these dishes at any respectable chinese place. I would not bring anyone to a restaurant called “gwailo” just like I would not dine at a place called chinaman. Good luck
Ryan says:

March 20, 2012 at 9:17 am

Agree with Banana, won’t be going here based on name alone. I know people who use that term in a derogatory manner. If you’re a white person, it would be odd to support this place that doesn’t exist yet. good luck
rob says:

March 20, 2012 at 9:30 am

+1 on the name and avoiding the place.

Having worked in China for a few years, i am very familiar with the name and it’s meanings.
Most times it was used crudely to mean ‘Ghost’ which was a shot at caucasians.

And Banana, as you know the equivalent name wouldn’t be chinaman
banana says:

March 20, 2012 at 4:02 pm

Of course, got to keep it clean :)
mmmmm says:

March 22, 2012 at 2:03 am

I don’t even know what is so tantalizing about these dishes. I’m also curious about what the prices will be like for this food, surely not too modest. I don’t mind paying out the ass for a good meal even when each course is tiny (which is often the way it goes) if I know there are fresh, quality ingredients being used and the methods of preparation are labour intensive and/or require a great deal of skill but judging from these dishes, there is really nothing special about the ingredients NOR the labour behind them, except maybe taking the time to cut up strips of nori, or frying up a quail egg (those things are delicate, you know!), and adding all these tiny little details (garnish at that) to one dish, details so small that they don’t even matter. It’s like going all out with parsley: what on earth is the point of all that?
I can only imagine what type of people will be dining here, if any. I would rather go to a place in Chinatown that serves the real thing, and in heartier (probably more flavourful too, judging from these descriptions–MSG aside) portions. I would feel ripped-off eating at a place like this (don’t even get me started on the name), as I am sure it’s not going to be cheap.
Lucille says:

March 28, 2012 at 1:04 pm

Reading some of the comments … never mind food, what’s needed is a good dose of humour. C’mon guys, light’n up!

Comments are closed.

Nick Liu shows off some culturally promiscuous cooking at the preview dinner for his new restaurant, GwaiLo

11 thoughts on “Nick Liu shows off some culturally promiscuous cooking at the preview dinner for his new restaurant, GwaiLo”

Big Stories

The Inside Job: A crooked cop, a dead man and an $800,000 estate fraud

The Killer in Suite 104: Inside the Vaughan condo shooting

The fabulous, terrifying, chaotic life of Josh Richards, TikTok’s reigning influencer

Who broke the TTC? Inside Toronto’s public transit disaster

“At 31, I discovered that my parents had been keeping a shocking secret—and the surprises just kept coming”

Promised Land: Inside the debate raging around the Greenbelt