Italy meets China at Miantiao restaurant at the Shangri-La Hotel, Vancouver
Globally trained chef Alex Tung helms the forthcoming dining destination
Chef Alex Tung sees many parallels between Italian and Chinese cuisines, which come together at the forthcoming Miantiao, a new restaurant by Kitchen Table Group.
TORONTO-BORN VANCOUVER-based chef Alex Tung has worked at some of the world’s top fine-dining establishments, including destinations run by the likes of Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Daniel Boulud. We’re talking “fancy-schmancy”, places where he learned all about “the pursuit of excellence”. He was living in New York at the time of 9/11; he happened to be fishing that day rather than at work in Manhattan, but the event made him his sights on Canada anew.
Tung headed to the West Coast in 2002, met his wife while working at the Wedgewood Hotel and Spa, and never looked back. These days, he’s culinary director of the Kitchen Table Group, which includes Ask for Luigi, Di Beppe Ristorante, and Pourhouse, among other spots. Tung will be helming the newest restaurant in the company’s portfolio, one launching later this spring that’s hotly anticipated by local food enthusiasts.
Miantiao opens May 7 at the Shangri-La Hotel, Vancouver. (That’s the date the hotel is reopening after a hiatus).
The restaurant takes its name from the Mandarin word for noodle—a cornerstone in both Italian and Chinese cuisines. Tung is well-suited for the role of bringing the unique culinary concept to life. For one, he grew up in a Chinese household; his parents are from Hong Kong. For another, he has travelled extensively throughout Italy over the last decade as brand ambassador to an artisanal-pasta company and olive-oil producer. Then there’s the fact that he has always loved eating his way around the world.
“Food was always a huge part of our family,” says Tung, who studied at the New England Culinary Institute and the University of Toronto. “Family celebrations were always big dinners, Chinese banquets. My parents were travellers, so I had the opportunity to travel a fair bit—we were diners, eaters, so at an early age, we started dining at more French restaurants, Italian restaurants, Western restaurants.
“There are so many parallels between Chinese and Italian culture—the way we think about family, the way we dine, the focus on food in our cultures; look at Italian and Chinese weddings,” he says. “When you look at the food [in each culture], it’s kind of surreal.”
Although the origins of pasta are disputed, a widespread belief has it that Marco Polo brought noodles to Italy from China during the 13th century.
There are other similarities in ingredients besides noodles. “Prosciutto is a beautiful product from Parma, but people have been curing ham in the exact same way in Northern China long before Italy,” Tung says. “When you look at different regions of Italy and China based on latitude, there are similarities in the way they use citrus and olives.”
While Tung isn’t in a position to divulge details on specific dishes Miantiao will offer quite yet, he says the fresh pasta program will be exceptional. And he emphasizes that the menu is most definitely not fusion. “Fusion has a rap of being so ’80s; it’s using something for the sake of using it. That’s not our mentality. Our mentality is to showcase Italian food with no rules, with a bit of Chinese sensibility, with access to an international pantry with techniques to address balance and umami in ways that it really elevates a dish. At the same time, we want to take Chinese food and influence it with incredible Italian products.”
To execute this cultural mashup, Tung credits an experienced group of “thinkers”. (Their names and more details will be released in coming weeks.) “We don’t do things for no good reason,” he says. “We’ve assembled an exceptional team, and I’m so excited to be working with these leaders in Vancouver hospitality.”
Chef Alex Tung is culinary director of Kitchen Table Group.
Tung says even after so many years in the culinary arts, he’s just as enthused about this new venture as any other job title he has held in the past. It all started at age 14 when he worked at Chi-Chis Mexican restaurant as a “chajita runner”, delivering sizzling plates of fajitas to tables.
At university, Tung did a quadruple major in finance, political science, geology, and computer science. While his academic background laid the foundation for multiple career options, he kept coming back to cooking. He reached out to top chefs throughout the U.S. and asked them if he could learn alongside them; what he lacked then in experience he made up for with enthusiasm. “I wasn’t looking at it from a job perspective at the time, but I would say, ‘This is what I’m really passionate about,’” he says. “My goal was to gain experience and to work for the best chefs possible.
“Fundamentally, I love the fact that I wake up and play in the world of food every day,” Tung says. “Apart from my family, food is my true passion in my life. We’re eaters first, and I always thought the best cooks were the best eaters. All the people who ever worked for me who are superstars, thrivers, today have as gluttonous a palate as I did. You can’t cook good food unless you know how to eat good food. I love the world of food, but most of all I love the relationships. It’s a people business.”
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