Employees shortages are the principle motive for the closure says the proprietor, who’s emotional concerning the ending. ’My mother and father created it, and it looks like I am letting it go.’
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The thought of what’s going to occur Saturday leaves Thomas Tang apologetic and even teary-eyed.
The 67-year-old’s restaurant, Received Ton Home, is to shut after 5 many years in enterprise, spanning two west-end Ottawa areas and two generations of owner-operators.
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“My mother and father created it, and it looks like I’m letting it go,” says Tang, earlier than he must dab tears from his eyes. “Sorry, I’m getting emotional. In some way I really feel like I failed them. I can’t preserve their legacy.”
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The Received Ton Home is considered one of Ottawa’s oldest Chinese language eating places. The Golden Palace on Carling Avenue, open for 63 years in accordance with its web site, says it’s Ottawa’s oldest Chinese language restaurant.
Tang’s late mother and father, Nelson and Winnie Tang, got here from Hong Kong to Canada with their three youngsters in 1969. Earlier than he got here to Ottawa, Nelson Tang was a chemist in Hong Kong. However he didn’t see a future in his area for himself in Canada, the place he wished to dwell as a result of his youngsters would obtain higher educations.
Earlier than the Tangs left Hong Kong, Nelson discovered concerning the restaurant enterprise. After he arrived in Ottawa, he labored as the pinnacle chef on the La Paloma Restaurant on Rideau Avenue. Tang didn’t have an English title, his son says, however he took “Nelson” as a result of the La Paloma was on the nook of Rideau and Nelson streets.
Ultimately the Tangs opened the primary Received Ton Home within the early Nineteen Seventies in a strip mall on Richmond Street close to Woodroffe Avenue. In a 1989 column, Kathleen Walker, this newspaper’s restaurant critic on the time, recalled the primary Received Ton Home as her favorite Chinese language restaurant, even when it was easy place bereft of decor and graced with only a counter and a handful of cubicles. She raved concerning the hole-in-a-wall’s deep-fried oysters.
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Thomas Tang recalled that the primary Received Ton Home served Canadian breakfasts and quick meals through the day earlier than switching to serve Chinese language meals for dinner. Nelson Tang “wasn’t too certain if the (Chinese language) fashion of delicacies would take off,” Tang says.
The primary Received Ton Home burned down throughout a fireplace at its plaza, and the Tangs re-opened additional east, on Wellington Avenue West, in a constructing that the household now owns. After many years, the Received Ton Home stays a beautiful eating room, with a big picture of Hong Kong’s skyline, circa the late Eighties, practically filling one wall.
Nelson, who died in 2004, and Winnie, who died in 2017, each labored on the Received Ton Home. Thomas labored on the restaurant whereas he was in highschool after which studied enterprise at Western College. After some years as an actual property agent, he took over the household enterprise within the Nineteen Nineties.
Tang says enterprise is regular at his restaurant and he has the assist of many regulars who’re saddened by this weekend’s closure, which he introduced on-line earlier this month.
“There are such a lot of recollections,” says Tang, citing regulars who had their first date on the Received Ton Home, and a girl whose dinner on the restaurant was interrupted when she went into labour. “There’s quite a lot of tales like that,” he says.
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Among the many restaurant’s boosters is Sue McMullen, a Glebe resident who made a visit to the Received Ton Home this week for a remaining takeout order after she heard it might shut.
McMullen says she and her buddies who celebrated birthday events on the Received Ton Home might be devastated.
“It’s arduous to discover a restaurant with fantastic service, terrific meals, and a pleasant atmosphere,” she says.
The primary motive for Tang closing Received Ton Home is a scarcity of workers, Tang says. “It’s so arduous to get folks to work and I consider quite a lot of the youthful technology should not going into the identical companies,” he says. “They don’t wish to work in a Chinese language restaurant. It’s very arduous to recruit new folks.”
A skeleton crew of only a few folks runs the restaurant, which closes at closes at 9 p.m. One night time this week, Tang didn’t go away till 2 a.m. as a result of he was occupied with cleansing up and doing prep work, similar to making sauces.
Vicki Wu, who got here to Canada from China within the early Nineteen Nineties, has been a server on the Received Ton Home for 23 years. She says she is feeling waves of emotion concerning the closure, though she felt it was imminent, given her boss’s age.
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She says she might take a trip, maybe her first journey to Europe, after which search for work, however not within the restaurant enterprise. “It is going to be too arduous,” she says.
“The Chinese language have a saying: ‘There’s no banquet that may final eternally,’” she provides.
Her boss says he doesn’t know what’s subsequent for him after Saturday.
“I’ll take a deep breath, simply to settle down. I have no idea what I’m going to do,” Tang says.
phum@postmedia.com
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