Dedicated to dumplings, BLND TGER brings morsels of happiness to Vancouver's Chinatown
Chef Phong Vo draws on Jiangsu, Cantonese, and Sichuan cuisines
BLND TGER chef Phong Vo. Photo via BLND TGER.
SOMETIMES A DUMPLING isn’t just a dumpling. For BLND TGER chef Phong Vo and the new Chinatown eatery’s owner, Lewis Hart, the savoury little, filled pockets of dough are so much more.
“What else is a dumpling but a little morsel of pure happiness? It’s deceptively simple, but I so appreciate that so much effort goes into making the simplest thing coming together,” Vo says in an interview with Stir. “And when it does, it’s just beautiful.”
Hart adds: “Dumplings are delicious. But more personally, dumplings are getting off the overnight train and stepping into a new city, and the first taste of that new city are dumplings from a street hawker. They represent hospitality as well as a touchstone of discovery, and I wanted to share that experience.”
BLND TGER (251 East Georgia Street) occupies the former home of the Keefer Bakery. At about 200 square feet, it’s modelled after food stands found in the longtangs (alleys) of Shanghai. The menu draws from various cuisines, including Jiangsu, Cantonese, and Sichuan.
Vo, formerly of Ampersand Bistro, Heirloom, and Yuzu Izakaya, has been immersed in the culinary world his whole life. Originally from Vietnam, he was five years old when he and his mother joined his father in Calgary. His dad had escaped the Communist regime earlier and sponsored them to join him. Having lived in Vancouver for nearly 30 years, Vo says restaurants are a family affair.
“Pretty much all of my extended family—in Alberta, Vancouver, and Vietnam—are in the business in one way or another,” Vo says. “And from the experience of coming from another country, your food traditions are extremely present and important. Vietnamese cuisine is very influenced by Chinese cuisine, and also French. But Vietnamese and Chinese food certainly inform one other. It wouldn’t be ridiculously simplistic to say that a lot of Vietnamese cooking comes from a Chinese base with Vietnamese ingredients and spicing.”
Chef Phong Vo describes a dumpling as a “little morsel of happiness”. Photo via BLND TGER
Vo came to meet Hart when he was looking for a job via the online platform Indeed.
“I had been out of the industry since early pandemic layoffs, and after working as a cranberry-pool operator for Ocean Spray, I wanted to get back in the kitchen,” Vo says. “I loved Lewis’s concept, and, as dumplings are a personal favourite, it all came together naturally. It was very reminiscent of what I had enjoyed doing at Yuzu Izakaya and Ampersand Bistro, making small delicacies.”
Born and raised in the U.K., Hart emigrated to Vancouver in 2008, and from his very first job as a bouncer knew he wanted to enter the hospitality industry. His previous roles include expanding Café Crepe into new markets, which is how he fell in love with the people and diverse cultures of China and Hong Kong.
Hart struck gold when he connected with Vo at a time when finding qualified, dedicated chefs is extremely difficult. “I wanted someone who really embraces a kitchen culture and someone who understood Chinese cuisine,” Hart says. “Overall, we were looking for the right personality and from the moment we met, I knew Phong was exactly what we needed.”
Vo calls the menu’s offerings from different regions his “standout recipes”. The dumplings are made with fresh dough rolled in-house daily and stuffed with fillings sourced from neighbouring Chinatown businesses.
The pork in the Single Malt Xiao Long Bao and Zhong Dumplings, for instance, comes from neighbourhood mainstay Carley’s BBQ & Hot Pot Supply, right next door. Vegetables like eggplant and shiitake mushrooms that go in the Vegetable Shaomai as well as dry goods and spices, like the cumin and Sichuan peppercorns for the Xinjiang Cumin Lamb Dumplings, are sourced from Ga Cheong Herbal Medic around the corner on Gore Avenue.
Being in Chinatown means supporting your neighbours, and the two say that there’s no other neighbourhood where they would have wanted to set up shop.
“We are excited to be in Chinatown,” Vo says. “I don’t think we could have opened our doors anywhere else because we’re trying to recreate Chinese recipes and cuisine, and to do that authentically, we need to be at the heart of a community that will support that.
“Shopping for me is so easy,” he says. “Almost everything comes from not just Chinatown, but in most cases from the same block. Much of our produce comes from literally next door. We share a wall with our supplier.”
BLND TGER also offers a rotating roster of house-made, bottled, cold-steeped iced teas, brewed and flavoured by award-winning barman Alex Black. He uses premium teas from the renowned outlet Treasure Green Tea Company, helmed by second-generation tea master Olivia Chan.
“Our tea is from a few doors down,” Vo says. “Before we opened, I had known Olivia for 10 years since my family owned a bubble-tea spot in North Burnaby. We’ve been so welcomed by the surrounding businesses and the community that it’s added a new level of achievement for us to attain. We want to live up to the warmth of our welcome.”
What Vo can’t source from the neighbourhood he brings in from premium local suppliers. A reliable supply of yak is tough to get, he says; he has substituted Two Rivers Specialty Meats’ bison for the Tibetan-style Bison Momos. Then there’s the locally based meat alternative in the vegan TMRW Foods & Cabbage Jiaozi.
Black also runs the restaurant’s social media; check out its Instagram account and you’ll see all kinds of poetry.
“They’re all poems about food and drinking and speak to how integral food and drink are to Chinese culture in all ways and forms,” Black tells Stir. “The Book of Songs, the thousands-of-years-old anthology of ancient Chinese folk poems, has tons of references to drinking and food but these poems and entries are not nearly as well known by those following our social media. So I guess there’s also an educational spirit to it.”
As for the restaurant’s name, the story behind BLND TGER is this: If the tiger is blind, it doesn’t have eyes.
BLND TGER occupies the former home of the Keefer Bakery and is modelled after food stands found in the longtangs (alleys) of Shanghai. Photo via BLND TGER.
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