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Food & Drink

Sort-of Secret: Yan Dining Room, chef Eva Chin’s new neo-Chinese dinner series at Hong Shing

Part of our series spotlighting the city’s edible hidden gems

By Caroline Aksich| Photography by Joshua Best
Sort-of Secret: Yan Dining Room, chef Eva Chin’s new neo-Chinese dinner series at Hong Shing

The sort-of secret: Yan Dining Room, chef Eva Chin’s new neo-Chinese pop-up inside of Hong Shing Restaurant You may have heard of it if: You’ve been following Chin since her days at Momofuku Kojin But you probably haven’t tried it because: It’s hidden in Hong Shing’s private dining room

Keeping a restaurant relevant while maintaining its soul is a delicate balancing act, but Colin Li has nailed it at Hong Shing. In the past four years, the second-generation restaurateur has modernized both his family’s restaurant and its menu while leaving nostalgic staples untouched (like the General Tso chicken, a crowd-pleaser for almost three decades). Now, with the help of chef Eva Chin, Li is gearing up for Hong Shing’s next chapter: expansion.

Chefs and staff stand outside of Hong Shing, a Chinese restaurant in Toronto
From left: Theresa Walsh (head of FOH for Yan Dining Room and Chin’s wife), Eva Chin, Cyril Maquinto (Chin’s sous-chef) and Hong Shing owner Colin Li

Upon moving to Toronto in March of 2020 to helm Kojin, Chin made a splash in the city’s food scene. Her Chinese fusion dishes—like the viral mapo tofu pizza—became pandemic sensations. But the layers of bureaucracy and red tape in the corporate kitchen limited her creative freedom. When she finally broke free (just before the restaurant closed for good), Chin was ready to unleash a wave of new menu concepts.

Shortly after leaving Kojin, Chin landed at Avling, an east-end brewery she helped to transform into a foodie hotspot with bold seasonal dishes that fused Chinese techniques and flavours with local ingredients, fermentation and whole-animal butchery. When she was asked to switch to a menu of more standard Canadian brewpub classics, however, Chin passed and struck out on her own.

Now, after a year of focusing on her mental and physical health, Chin is working as Hong Shing’s new culinary director. While building an empire (comprising catering and multiple restaurants) is the long-term goal, Chin is starting with her own passion project: Yan Dining Room, a neo-Chinese tasting-menu concept operating three nights a week out of Hong Shing’s 26-seat private dining room.

A spread of Neo-Chinese dishes at Yan Dining Room, a popup restaurant in Toronto
Chef Eva Chin puts the finishing touches on a scallop dish in the kitchen

“Neo-Chinese is about connecting with Chinese history while pushing boundaries,” explains Chin. “It’s about bringing nostalgia into the future with modern refinement.” At Yan, she’s plating the delicious culmination of her culinary journey—a tasting menu that showcases seasonal Canadian ingredients alongside regional Chinese cuisine. For the first tasting menu, Cantonese and Sichuan flavours are taking centre stage.

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For Chin, finding her culinary voice has been a journey of self-discovery shaped by her multicultural roots. Born to a Chinese-Singaporean father and a Chinese-Samoan mother, she bounced between Hawaii and New York thanks to her dad’s consulate work. After graduating from university, she landed in Japan, where a hilariously short four-hour stint as an English teacher quickly devolved into a job washing dishes to pay the bills. Chin had cooked in restaurants during her university days, but she never saw it as something that could lead to a career—she wanted to end up in Quantico. But it was in that Tokyo kitchen, helmed by a perfectionist chef (think Jiro Dreams of Sushi levels of fanaticism), that cooking went from something to make ends meet to her sole purpose.

A chef cooks rice in a wok
A closeup of a spoon tattoo on a chef's arm

Inspired by Japanese chefs who elevate a single dish into an art form, Chin cooked her way through top restaurants in Japan, Australia, France and England—until her funds ran dry. So she popped over to Hong Kong to visit her parents and figure out her next steps. It was during this trip that she got a wake-up call about her cultural disconnect. “The customs officer mocked my Chinese pronunciation—I couldn’t even say or write my full name!” she says.

Determined to reconnect with her roots, Chin set off on a food-focused multi-year adventure through China, cooking in Beijing, Guangzhou and Nanjing. “I wanted to learn the real depth of Chinese cuisine and understand why we don’t see our own food as the treasure it is,” she says.

A table is set with baijiu decanters, a dish of noodles and cocktails
While Chin handles everything food-related at Yan Dining Room, Li oversees the drink program. For $50, guests can choose a pairing of baijiu or biodynamic wines from small vintners

Related: Baijiu, China’s national spirit, is making waves in Toronto

At Yan Dining Room, Chin is serving up a multi-course tasting experience with Michelin polish, Chinese soul and Ontario ingredients. “I want to showcase the beauty and complexity of Chinese food, but in a way that feels personal and special,” says Chin. “The word yan means banquet. Here, every meal should feel like a celebration—like I’m welcoming you into my home for a feast.”

Three pillars shape the Yan experience. First, the structure of the meal is set in stone: it begins with a comforting broth followed by a course of seafood crudo and an array of cold snacks. Next is a hot-cold dish (right now it’s wok-seared mushrooms served with cold poached lobster in a ginger-scallion dressing), then a series of hot mains, and finally something sweet.

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Peeled and marinated local cherry tomatoes
These cherry tomatoes from ClearWater Farm (part of a recent cold course) are peeled and marinated in a dried plum and shiso brine, drawing inspiration from a traditional Cantonese technique used to enhance seasonal vegetables with preserved fruit

 

Breaded and fried eggplant, stuffed with salted fish
This eggplant is breaded, fried and stuffed with a mix of salted fish before being topped with yu xiang butter. The dish is a nod to the Sichuan classic fish-fragrant eggplant

Second, two cornerstone dishes—the crudo and the fish—are permanent fixtures on the menu (though guests can expect some seasonal variation in the accompaniments). Currently, the crudo features cured Digby scallops from Nova Scotia layered with thin sheets of Asian pear and fresh shiso leaves, all drizzled with a zesty Sichuan verde sauce and garnished with fermented microgreens from Green Buffalo Farms, which Chin describes as tasting like Chinese sauerkraut. And the fish dish will always marry a seasonal white fish with preserved fruit. A recent offering was a filet of seven-day-aged sea bream, with buttery flesh and ultra-crispy skin, swimming in a sweet-and-sour jus of preserved local cherries.

Aged sea bream in a preserved-cherry jus
Here’s the fish dish du jour: aged sea bream in a preserved-cherry jus

 

A single scallop rests in its shell, garnished with edible flower petals
And the finished scallop dish

Finally, the menu weaves a coherent and cohesive fusion narrative throughout. As Chin puts it, “Fusion is confusion. These dishes truly embody that. The mein, for example, is a clam-and-baijiu-infused French butter sauce served with Italian-style cooked Cantonese noodles. It cannot get more confusing and more fusion than this. But that is the whole point.”

Yan Dining Room runs Friday to Sunday. $88 per person plus tax and gratuity. Reservations available though Tock.

Clam- and baijiu-infused French butter sauce, served with Italian-style cooked Cantonese noodles
Italian-style cooked Cantonese noodles served with a clam-and-baijiu-infused French butter sauce

 

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Yan’s Garden is a refreshing mix of baijiu infused with dill oil, dry vermouth and chardonnay
Served with the cold courses, Yan’s Garden is a refreshing mix of dill-oil-infused baijiu, dry vermouth and chardonnay. $18

 

The General Tao cocktail, made with baijiu, tequila, chili pepper, Amaro Nonino, black Chinese vinegar, hawthorn and cherry
The General Tao is a cheeky reference to Hong Shing’s star dish. A blend of baijiu and reposado tequila is spiked with chili pepper and Amaro Nonino. The addition of black Chinese vinegar, hawthorn and cherry mirrors the sweet, sour and spicy notes of the classic chicken dish. $22

 

The Grape Gatsby cocktail mixes baijiu and Hennessy with lemongrass and cabernet sauvignon syrup
The Grape Gatsby mixes baijiu and Hennessy with lemongrass and cabernet sauvignon syrup. A splash of verjus keeps it balanced and refreshing. It’s garnished with a candied grape. $19

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