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The 3300-block of Kingsway, between Joyce and Stamford streets, is brimming with small restaurants, bakeries and grocery stores from a large number of immigrant communities
Exploring the restaurants that bring Metro Vancouver neighbourhoods to life.
The hunt for Vancouver’s best-kept culinary secrets is never-ending.
Here’s one you may not know about: the neighbourhood around the Joyce-Collingwood SkyTrain Station in east Vancouver.
Urban planner Andy Yan raves about the area, which is brimming with small restaurants, bakeries and grocery stores from a large number of immigrant communities.
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There are a couple of clusters in the 4900- and 5100-blocks of Joyce. But the largest concentration is in the 3300-block Kingsway, which has 24 restaurants and bakeries.
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“Happy Day Cafe (3320 Kingsway) is one of those fantastic little Chinese Hong Kong cafés,” Yan pointed out while we drove around looking for a parking spot.
“Then you have the Super Thai Hot Pot, the new hot pot (at 3327 Kingsway). You have some older Cantonese noodle shops, and you also have a great Xian (Chinese) restaurant, Joojak (3337 Kingsway).
“Here is what used to be the London Drugs (at 3328 Kingsway), which is going to become the 88 Supermarket. But you also have Wang Shanghai (3328 Kingsway), which has some of the best soup dumplings in the city.”
It’s easy to miss Wang Shanghai from Kingsway, though. The small restaurant is set back from the street, at the eastern end of the old London Drugs parking lot. But it was packed when we went by on a recent Friday.
“It’s Shanghai dumplings, northern (Chinese) style dumplings,” he explains.
“This is one of the best soup dumplings in the city, mixed-in with some amazing cold won tons, as well as noodles. They also have this fried version of the soup dumpling that is phenomenal.”
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And it’s affordable. Most of the noodle dishes are $15.
This is key, because the neighbourhood is largely working class, a mix of small houses and apartment blocks and newer, larger houses and condos.
The neighbourhood also has a lot of mid-rise and highrise towers, built after the Joyce SkyTrain opened in Dec., 1985.
Yan says the 2021 Census found the tower part of the neighbourhood is the densest part of Vancouver. It’s known as Census tract 9330016.06, and stretches from Joyce to Boundary Road, cutting through several streets in a jagged pattern from Vanness to Ormindale and Kingsway.
“Census tract 9330016.06 at 524 people per hectare has the highest total population density in Metro Vancouver, and Western Canada for that matter,” said Yan. “It is the fifth-densest Census tract in Canada, with the top four all in Toronto.”
In 2021, this was 6,489 people, in what amounts to 10 blocks. This helps account for some of the neighbourhood’s culinary vibrancy — there’s a lot of people to eat in restaurants. But the area also draws in people from across the city.
The Panaderia Latina Bakery (4906 Joyce) is a Chilean hot spot that sells mouth-watering desserts and groceries that are imported from Latin America.
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It also features some of the tastiest sandwiches and empanadas in town. The sandwiches are almost as big as your head, and you will probably have to take half of it home. They tend to have a lot of beef.
“They’re very meat forward,” Yan said with a chuckle. “They’re hefty boys.”
There are six types of sandwiches. I had the #1, the Chacarero, which is thin slices of sirloin steak topped with fresh tomatoes, sautéed green beans and mayo on a handmade pan amasado bun. Yan went for the #3, the Barros Luco Palta, which has melted mozzarella cheese in place of the green beans.
They were awesome, but you’ll need some napkins. The quirk is, there is no seating inside the bakery, so we ate them outside the store. Most people take them to go.
David Tobias makes a special trip to Panaderia Latina from his home near UBC.
“It reminds me of my youth, I was born in Chile,” said Tobias, who picked up a box of fresh pastries. “Most of the pastries and empanadas that they make are in the style that is served in Chile. In Vancouver, it’s really one of the few places you can go (for it). A lot of the pastries are with dulcea de leche, which is again a very typical Chilean caramel, which is used in all kinds of pastries.”
Panaderia Latina is in a small complex that features a couple of restaurants: Sushi Taku (4902 Joyce) and Khansahab Kitchen (4942 Joyce), which offers “authentic Indian Halal cuisine.” There are also a couple of grocery stores, Khan Market (4940 Kingway) and Joyce Way Market (4910 Joyce).
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Yan sees the 4900 block Joyce as representative of “a particular set of businesses and buildings where a lot of the newest immigrants of Vancouver get their business started.”
Another example is the 5100 block of Joyce, which is home to a trio of Filipino restaurants, Plato Filipino (5175 Joyce), Pampanga’s Cuisine (5179 Joyce) and Kumare Express (5183 Joyce).
When the block was threatened by development in 2021, writer Chris Cheung did a story for The Tyee titled “Will a Rezoning Damage Vancouver’s Filipino Heart?” Cheung wrote of how the restaurants in the 5100 block are essential to the large Filipino community – nurses are often too busy to cook, so pick up multiple meals there to heat up later.
City councillors took note. In 2022, Christine Boyle (now the provincial housing minister) proposed a “Placekeeping” motion that said the city should investigate “developing protections for cultural food assets and other forms of intangible cultural heritage within the redevelopment process.” It passed unanimously, and the proposed highrise in the 5100-block Joyce hasn’t been built.
Yan loves Filipino food, particularly silog, a “hearty rice, meat and egg breakfast,” and adobo, a dish that can be pork, chicken, seafood or vegetables, “braised in a garlic soy or flavoured sauce.”
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But then, he loves all sorts of food near the Kingsway Joyce SkyTrain. The Xian Chinese restaurant Joojak, for example, “has one of those dishes you should eat in Vancouver before you die,” steamed chicken with chili sauce.
“The formal Chinese translation is salivating chicken,” said Yan.
“It’s a sauce that is so savory that you can’t help but salivate. It is one of (their) kind of core dishes. The others are the noodles, the cold noodles, as well as the beef rolls. Between those three dishes, this is a phenomenal place to try Xian Chinese food, which is northern Chinese.”
Most of the restaurants in the area are small, in older buildings that offer cheap rent. There is some turnover, but Yan points out that there are very few empty storefronts, unlike in some of Vancouver’s pricier neighbourhoods.
One of the new additions is the Kroren Uyghur Restaurant (3377 Kingsway), which features food from northwest China. Yan is eager to sample the hand-pulled noodle soups, and dishes like the Xinjiang Big Plate Chicken, which is big enough for three people.
“I really go out to eat too much.” said Yan.
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Location: The 3300-block Kingsway, between Joyce and Stamford streets.
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Number of restaurants and food options: 24.
What are the options for parking? City of Vancouver parking metres.
What are Metro Vancouver’s Eat Streets?
This article is part one of a series highlighting Metro Vancouver’s must-visit Eat Streets. With the goal of celebrating — and maybe even introducing you to — stretches of community around the region that have a notable concentration of local food businesses. Know of a great Eat Street in your community? Let us know where. Email us at artslife@vancouversun.com.
Read about more of Metro Vancouver’s Eat Streets:
• Eat Streets: A United Nations of cuisine on Vancouver’s Victoria Drive
• Eat Streets: Langley City’s one-way a hub of local food
• Eat Streets: Delta and Surrey unite over food on this stretch of Scott Road
• Eat Streets: Comfort food served Hong Kong-style at Richmond’s Empire Centre
• Eat Streets: There’s now a world of flavours on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive
• Eat Streets: North Vancouver’s Lower Lonsdale reinvented as a foodie destination
• Eat Streets: Where hippies used to gather on West 4th Avenue, foodies now flock for the old and the new
• Eat Streets: New Westminster gets fresh life on Columbia Street (and in a SkyTrain station)
• Eat Streets: Vancouver’s Yaletown a place to eat, drink, and ‘to see and be seen’
• Eat Streets: The ever-evolving waterfront food scene on White Rock’s Marine Drive
• Eat Streets: The hidden gem of Burnaby Heights
• Eat Streets: Kerrisdale transforms from typical British fare to a world of delicious new flavours
• Eat Streets: Abbotsford’s old town an epicentre of quirky cafés
• Eat Streets: Vancouver’s Main Street remains valiantly local, international and eclectic
Bookmark THIS PAGE to read the latest instalment every Wednesday.
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Source: vancouversun.com
